


Nessian Growth After ACOWAR

by donttouchmyrubiesgirl



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas, MAAS Sarah J. - Works
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Banter, F/M, Mates, Neck Kissing, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2018-11-03 14:39:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10969308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donttouchmyrubiesgirl/pseuds/donttouchmyrubiesgirl
Summary: Nesta and Cassian finally face each other after ACOWAR. Nesta, overwhelmed by the loss of her father and what happened between her and Cassian during the war, resorts to being a stone cold bitch. Cassian loves every minute but sets her straight. There's no going back.Neck smoochies and mate truth ensue.





	1. Chapter 1

In her room on the second level of the townhouse, Nesta Archeron sat still at the edge of her bed. The skirts of her simple, black gown spread around her, the ticking of the clock counting out the endless pulse of seconds. She had sat exactly here every morning, all morning, since they had returned to Velaris from that field of gore and sorrow. The same swirl of thoughts tunneling through her mind as hours drifted by.

Her father had come. Her father who had been content to watch Nesta and her sisters starve. Who had let Nesta down so thoroughly the disappointment had winked out whatever stores of hope and faith she’d once had. That pain, which had cut so deep.... That hardest lesson, which Nesta had vowed she would never forget. That other people can steal your breath away with hurt. That the ones bound to protect you, will fail you the most harshly. 

Nesta had lived with the lessons her father taught her for many years now. And she had learned how to encase herself in armor. Not visible like the Illyrian leathers her sister and…the males favored, but just as impenetrable. No one could see the wounds. No one could pierce through to add to them. And for those who would, Nesta had learned to distract them with their own pain. She had a talent for it.

But now…her father had come. The Prince of Merchants had sailed in from the East on a vessel named for her. He had sacrificed months of his too-short life to ensure she and her sisters survived. He had given his breath to keep them alive. To atone. Now, the palace of lessons Nesta had so carefully constructed to keep herself safe had no foundation. And Nesta wondered…she wondered whether she had imprisoned herself like a fool. She had been so busy wearing her armor…she wasn’t sure if anything was left underneath. Much less anything of worth.

There was a tentative knock at the bedroom door. Nesta snorted softly. Feyre’s please don’t bite my head off knock. Nesta rose, smoothing her skirts and her face. 

“What?” she demanded, opening the door a crack. 

Feyre seemed surprised she’d opened it. The High Lady of the Night Court swallowed and asked carefully, “Would you like to visit the library at the House of Wind?”

This was a new tactic. A cleverer one. Feyre had caught on that Nesta had no interest in sitting in Elain’s garden. As much as she loved to watch Elain work, to observe her easy contentment around growing things, Nesta didn’t want to see…she didn’t want the others to bother her with their chatter. 

Still, Nesta narrowed her eyes. “Who’s there?”

“I don’t know,” Feyre replied cautiously. Then offered, “But we’ll kick them out.”

Nesta dismissed her with a look and made to shut the door. 

Feyre halted it with a palm. “No one’s there,” her little sister amended. “Rhys and Az are debriefing with Helion about Vassa’s curse. Mor and…Cassian have been helping the Illyrian widows.” 

Nesta hated how Feyre said the name so carefully, even as a small tremor coursed through her at its sound. The words he’d said on that horrible day replayed in her mind for the thousandth time. How he’d find her in the next world. How his greatest regret was that they had had no time. The ghost of his kiss haunted her lips.

Well, now they had time. But Nesta didn’t know what to do with it. With him. With herself. Who was she supposed to be now that her father had come and rattled the very floor she’d built her self upon? What did Cassian even see beneath her armor that had him wanting more? He’d called her a coward once. A spoiled, useless coward. She never forgot those words. How their truth had resounded through her like a death knell. She was probably the only female who had ever denied the general. He probably had some fantasy that beneath it all she was sweet like Elain. Or easy and warm like Mor. Mor who guarded him so closely and whom he guarded as well. 

Better to keep away than to disappoint. And Nesta was no one’s conquest.

“Fine,” Nesta said, keeping her voice flat. And then, just to make sure there was no trap, she asked, “You’ll fly me?”

Feyre nodded reassuringly, as if coaxing an animal out of its den. Nesta raised her chin. 

“I’m not a child,” Nesta told her sister coolly before sweeping past her down the hall. 

***

Cassian landed hard enough in the training ring that the roof of the House of Wind shuddered. He set down Mor, who had winnowed them outside the wards. 

She glared at him as she brushed off the skirts of her lavender dress. A subdued choice for Mor, but appropriate for the heartrending work of comforting the wives of now dead Illyrian soldiers. 

“Please do us all a favor and get laid,” Mor told him from under her brows. 

Cassian snarled at her, a little more violently than he meant to. Mor only laughed and shook her head. Then her face stilled into seriousness. 

“Why do you care?” she murmured. Her voice was so quiet he barely heard her over the mountaintop wind.

Cassian shot her a warning look. He knew what she meant. And Cassian…thought he might know the answer. He’d only begun to suspect it that day she went into the Cauldron, when all his instinct and focus shifted on the hinge of a single second from the unbearable pain of his shredded wings to the sounds of Nesta in danger. When the priorities of his world altered. That horrible day, long after he’d first felt the way she called to him. That cool, quiet, unbreakable strength. The courage that made him raise his chin in pride even though she was far from being…his. The unfathomable sensitivity to her that lay beneath. 

Cassian didn’t let his mind wander to what it would be like if she shared that sensitivity with him. If she trusted him. She hadn’t spoken to him since that day she’d lain her body over his so they could die together. He remembered how she felt. Warm and lithe and soft in all the right places. Something had clicked into place when she settled next to him in what they both thought were their final moments of this life. But he had barely seen her since and she hadn’t said a word to him. Not one word. 

Mor just crossed her arms. “You could have any female in Velaris,” she reminded him baldly. 

Not long ago a comment like that from Mor would have stirred him. He might have teased her and asked if it was an invitation. But now he couldn’t muster the effort to fake it. 

Real concern flash in her eyes then. 

“You deserve to be happy,” was all Mor said before turning to go inside. 

Cassian was midway through his warm-up when Az and Rhys landed. 

“You’re late,” he grunted. Az pretended not to see Rhys’ raised eyebrows. 

“What’s…chafing, Cass?” Rhys asked, folding his arms with a smirk. 

“Your face,” Cassian promised with a grin, jutting his chin so that Rhys assumed his guard stance.

“Careful,” the High Lord purred. He blocked Cassian’s lightening-fast strike efficiently. “We can’t afford to lose our best asset.”

“Feyre at least seems to like it,” Cassian conceded, his breath coming quicker now, his body relaxing into the familiar rhythm of exertion. 

“It’s her favorite place to sit,” Rhys said piously. 

Azriel made a choking sound. A loud bark of laughter ripped through Cassian’s chest and he met his friend’s twinkling eyes. He knew what Rhys was doing. The High Lord hadn’t missed how quiet his general had been since their return. Since Nesta had locked herself away.

Az stepped into the gap on Cassian’s left and the three males seamlessly shifted into two-against-one, the pace and beat of Cassian’s breath and blood quickening to meet the double strikes. 

“If I didn’t know better,” Rhys mused, barely winded now that Azriel was doing half the work. “I’d say she was hiding.”

“Don’t. Know. Who. You. Mean.” Cassian said with a brutal punch for each word. 

Azriel took the opportunity of Cassian’s distraction to sweep his right foot to the back of his knee with stomach-dropping precision. Cassian stumbled and regained his footing. He shook out his sweat-soaked hair in the brief break of contact. Rhys looked down at the drops on his black jacket with mild disgust. 

“I mean Nesta, of course,” he said, rounding on Cassian from the right while Az took the left. “You know Nesta, don’t you? Feyre’s delightful sister? The charming one who always says hello and never slams doors in your face?”

“I’ve heard of her,” Cassian ground out. Playing along would be easier at this point. Rhys was on a roll. 

“She’s hiding.”

“I don't think Nesta hides,” said Azriel doubtfully. 

“Ah, but that’s what she wants you think,” Rhys said, before the air was whooshed out of him by Cassian’s fist to the gut. 

“She’s grieving for her father,” Cassian gritted. 

“She is,” Rhys agreed, a little wheezily. “She’s also hiding.”

They broke, each male heaving in breath. Cassian gulped down water from a pitcher and gasped for more air. 

“Why would she do that?” he asked with a grin. “When I’m so good at finding things?”

Az rolled his eyes. But Rhys said solemnly, “Perhaps she wants to be found.”

***

Nesta sat curled in her favorite chair in the library. She should have come here sooner. The book dragged her down into another world and for as long as she drank the words off the pages, she forgot everything else. The grief, the guilt, the fear.

Her head snapped up at the sound of footsteps she recognized. Light and unhurried but with enough mass behind them to thud softly. Her heart began to pound. His footsteps grew louder…he was walking to the library. She glanced to the stacks of books behind her. Everything that had happened between them—the desperate way she’d screamed his name, his arms around her as they flew, the way she’d…she’d been prepared to die with him. Too much. She’d revealed too much. She felt a blush flare up in her face and sprang from her chair. 

Nesta was halfway to the stacks before the door opened. His scent hit her before he closed the door. Storm wind, Illyrian leather and steel. She felt herself stiffen. 

“Hello, Nesta.” He said it like a dare. She straightened her shoulders and faced Cassian. Saw the vicious grin he saved just for her.

Rather than give him the chance to wheel a conversation in his favor, she dismissed him with a glance and walked away between the shelves, looking for an empty spot to place her book. 

She realized her mistake when he followed, blocking out the light with his massive body. She straightened, refusing to let his size intimidate her. The space was so much tighter in here. She felt her pulse hammer in her neck. When his eyes dipped to it, she wondered if he could see its frantic beat. 

Then his eyes were all over her face as if he was drinking her in. 

“What are you looking at?” she asked coolly.

His grin turned wicked. “I didn’t know you knew how to blush,” he answered in a low voice. 

Deny it and look like a fool or stay quiet and turn steadily redder. She decided to distract him.

“Feyre told me you’ve been comforting the Illyrian widows. I didn’t know warmongering savages knew how to comfort widows.” Nesta returned her attention to the shelves in the pure dismissal she had honed as sharp as his battle sword.

“Jealous?”

“No.”

“If you need some comfort, Nesta, you only have to ask.”

She whirled on him and bared her teeth at that insufferable grin. “What do you want?” she demanded. 

“I came to see what you’ve been doing.”

“In the library? What do you think I’ve been doing? Reading.” She sounded like an impatient schoolmistress.

“More like hiding.” 

***

Wrong thing to say. But Cassian couldn’t help grinning when that unholy fire sparked in Nesta’s blue-grey eyes. Her glare was like steel, so similar to the weaponry he wielded like extensions of himself. 

“And what exactly am I hiding from?” Nesta tilted her head, looked him up and down. She had that ice in her eyes that meant Cassian was about to get stung. Did the anticipation he felt make him insane? Her movement stretched the long, pale neck he loved to look at and he let his eyes wander its length. “I’m not afraid,” Nesta added with ruthless quiet. “Of bat-winged bastards.”

The jab hurt like it always did. But now he knew her. He’d felt her lay her body over his to take the brunt of Hybern’s magic before it obliterated them both. 

He stood a step forward. Trepidation swam up to melt some of the ice in her eyes. 

“You’re hiding from me.”

She cut him a cruel smile but yielded a step. 

“I see almost dying has done nothing to shrink the size of your head,” she replied. 

“You’re afraid of me,” Cassian continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Because you don’t yet know that I’d never hurt you.”

The cruel smile slipped for half a second. 

“But mostly, you’re afraid of yourself.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she hissed. She’d said that to him before. But it wasn’t true then. And it wasn’t true now.

“I know you, Nesta.”

“You do not.” She pronounced it like a queen. 

He chuckled.

“You don’t know what to do, do you? Now that you’ve shown me behind those walls. Am I first person who’s ever caught a glimpse?” he taunted. 

Nesta stepped closer until they were toe-to-toe and she stared him down despite the fact that he was at least a foot taller. 

“You do think highly of yourself,” she mused. “For someone from nothing. Who has nothing but the charity of his High Lord.”

“I’ve got something, Nesta,” Cassian told her, lowering his cruel, lewd smile until it hovered an inch from her face. “I think you’ll like it. Beg for it even.” 

In a flash, she raised her hand to slap his face but he caught her wrist before she could. He made a circle on the inside of her wrist with his thumb. 

She yanked her hand away. 

“You’re a mauling, ham-handed brute and I don’t why Rhysand lets you near those widows,” she spat in his face. “I wouldn’t let your near me for all of Prythian.”

Cassian smiled and shook his head. She was scared and it was making her sloppy. It was endearing really. But she couldn’t take them back to before no matter how hard she tried.

So he told her in a voice as low and firm as untapped ore, “I heard you scream my name. I saw your eyes when you thought I would die. You didn’t leave. You stayed.” He watched as her face fell, small muscles quivering. “You can’t go back,” Cassian told her gently. “There’s no going back.”

He’d never seen that look on her face. He’d never seen Nesta show her fear. Something deep within him softened, because he understood it. He understood her. 

She took a step away from him. Then another. Then she was turning and Cassian knew she was about to do the most un-Nesta like thing he could imagine. She was about to run. 

“Do not run away,” Cassian said in the tone he saved for the legions of Illyrian soldiers he commanded. “You are not a coward, Nesta.” 

She stopped dead in her tracks, her back to him. 

“You called me that before,” she said with soft steel.

“I know I did. I was wrong.”

She didn’t say anything for a long while. Then she whispered, “I think you were right.”

He strode for her until he stood an inch away from her back. Without allowing it, his hand reached up and brushed the soft, gold-brown curls at the nape of her neck. Too small to be captured by the bun that contained her hair. He wanted to see it down. 

“Being afraid doesn’t make you a coward. Only running does,” he murmured. “It’s okay to be afraid.” How his lips had gotten so close to her skin he wasn’t sure. 

***

Nesta felt his breath against her nape. Felt his words sink into her like a stone dropped into a pool. She might have wondered how someone with whom she fought so viciously could make her feel…safe. But Nesta knew. He saw her. Even the worst. And still he stood at her back.

Slowly she turned to face him and found his eyes. 

His lips curved. “Hello, Nesta.”

Her father had come. They were alive. She wasn’t a coward. 

Her fingers drifted to his forearm, braced on a lower shelf. His tanned skin was so warm. She let her fingertips graze a little. He felt like fire, like the crimson flare of his red battle magic. He shifted a little on his feet while he let her touch. 

***

“Hello, Cassian,” she replied softly after a while. He shivered. 

Cassian dipped his head to run the tip of his nose along that pale, steel enforced neck. He inhaled deeply. Nesta. She smelled like the frost that crusted the Illyrian steppes on a winter morning…and like anise tea. Cassian watched her swallow and pulled back. Her eyes were glazed like stormy blue marbles. 

Then he asked what had been eating at him for days. The unanswered question that had made her absence and her silence such a heavy weight on Cassian’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”

Nesta paled a little, her wandering hand coming to a halt. But she didn’t run. She only lifted a slender shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. 

Cassian herded her body with his until her back was pressed against the bookshelf, savoring her sharp inhale of breath. Her white hands gripped the shelf just above her shoulders. 

He brushed his lips across her neck, subduing the urge to open his mouth and suck her in. She shivered. He did it again. And again, until Nesta shook like a leaf. When he glanced up her face was expressionless but her breath came quickly. She liked having her neck kissed almost as much as he liked kissing it. 

He stopped. Her brows pinched and he fought to contain his grin. She was about to push herself off the shelf when Cassian said, “A kiss for a thought. Tell me how you are.”

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice throaty. 

Cassian dipped his head and let his breath remind her where his mouth had been. He glanced up and caught her eye, “Lies won’t get you much.”

Nesta rolled her eyes but he could have sworn her lips twitched. He grinned at her. She stared at him for a moment then looked over his shoulder and took a deep breath. 

As she released it, she offered up a stilted string of words, and Cassian found himself hoarding each one like Amren with her jewels. “I misjudged him…so harshly…my father. I wonder if I’ve misjudged…everything. And now he’s dead and it’s too late to say…anything to him.”

Cassian dipped his head and sealed his open mouth over her cool skin. Nesta’s shocked gasp went through him like a spear. The knowledge that she’d never been with a male hit him, as it often did, like a fall of rocks. He wondered if anyone had ever kissed her neck. 

He released her but didn’t lift his head, waiting. 

Again, she took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for the effort. “I don’t know who I…” the words choked off. She tried again. “I don’t know how to be without…”

“Your walls?” Cassian supplied gently.

Nesta swallowed and tilted her head to give him better access. Her voice was steadier when she said, “I don’t know how to be without my walls…without my armor.”

He licked her with a soft suck. She made a noise he suspected he would remember for the rest of his immortal life. “That’s okay, Nesta,” Cassian told her in a voice he barely recognized. “You’re safe. Just be you.” 

Then he withdrew his mouth and waited once more. She was shaking. But her expression was the most delicious combination of hazy pleasure and unbreakable determination. Once more she drew in a deep breath.

“I would have rather died than live in a world you had been taken from.”

Their eyes snagged. Cassian raised his head and every muscle in his body went utterly still as Nesta softly pressed her lips against his. Her kiss was unsure but not shy. Cassian had never felt so alive and awake and alert in his life. Too quickly she drew back. 

“Thank you for trying to save me,” Nesta said, her voice quiet and firm. “But I would never run. Never leave you like that. So don’t waste your time.” A shadow of memory darkened her eyes. “Or your breath,” she whispered. 

***

Some leash that Cassian had been keeping himself on snapped and Nesta found herself pressed between his hard body and the books behind her. His lips sealed over hers, coaxing her open, his tongue slipping inside to taste her. He made a satisfied, male sound. His mouth burned liked a forge and Nesta felt as if she were being melted down and recast. Pieces of herself began to fall and reorder themselves, clicking into place. Something between them tugged and she gasped roughly against Cassian’s lips at the sensation. 

“What is that?” she breathed.

His large palm, which burned like his lips, spread on her chest and Nesta thought he was going to touch her breasts. She’d never had a man touch her there…though Tomas had made to grab her that day. The idea of Cassian being the one made her spine arch against her will. 

But Cassian only slid his hand a fraction lower until it covered the place where she felt that tug, between her breasts. And then drifted lower to cover the center of her belly where she felt it too, almost as powerfully. How did he know?

“Oh…,” Nesta breathed. “Oh, no.”

Hazel eyes, so very gold around their bottomless center, calmly and keenly searched hers. She couldn’t find words. She could barely think coherent thoughts. Could he…? Could she…? Feyre and Rhys made sense but the idea that she—

A loud bang! had Nesta jumping out of her skin. Cassian’s hands moved to her shoulders to steady her as they both turned to face Feyre, Rhys and Amren. The latter still held out her hand, which had slammed open the library door. She was still getting used to the adjustments in her strength now that she was normal High Fae and not…whatever it was she had been. Amren, in typical Amren fashion, still hadn’t clarified. 

They were all staring. Feyre’s mouth was agape. Rhys was a curious combination of smugness and wariness. Amren merely raised one eyebrow.

Nesta knew how she and Cassian must look. She raised her chin. 

Feyre was the first to attempt speech. “I’m so, so sorry,” she stammered. 

“I thought you had better taste, girl,” Amren cut in. Cassian snarled at her and Amren wrinkled her nose.

“We were looking for a copy of a play,” Rhys explained smoothly if not a little aimlessly. “Took bets on a line. Which we will settle later.” The High Lord seemed to cut himself off before he started rambling. When no one filled the silence, he added, “Dinner is ready, by the way.”

“Not hungry,” Cassian growled but his tone said stop talking and get the fuck out.

“We have Vassa to discuss and—”

“It can wait,” Feyre interrupted, her voice almost a squeak. 

Nesta had had enough. She did not need to be gawked at. She needed time to think. Now. And since she rarely spoke at family dinners, the dining table would be good enough. 

“Don’t be silly,” Nesta snapped. “We’re coming to dinner.”

Cassian’s eyebrows shot together and he gave her a look as if to say we are?

Nesta looked away. She didn’t want to snap at him too. But she didn’t know how to tell him she needed to think. That tug…she still felt it. And something else too. A growing worry. But not her own. 

Of their own accord, her wide eyes returned to Cassian’s where she saw that worry glimmering. His.

Deftly, she side-stepped from between his body and the books, instantly missing his warmth. She fisted her hands when she felt a tremor begin to wrack them. Forcing herself to walk at a steady pace, Nesta brushed past Feyre and Rhys. 

“Dinner,” was all she said before exiting the room.

When she was halfway down the hall, Nesta heard Amren sigh and say, “I’m sure she’ll come to her senses.”

At the sound of Cassian’s vicious snarl, Nesta quickened her pace.


	2. Cookies & Myths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nessian continues to try to deal with it's feelings after ACOWAR and after eating each other's faces in the library. Nesta nudges towards honesty with herself if not entirely with him. Cassian continues to play the long game and provides more evidence that he has a deep, abiding obsession with her neck. A trip to theater and Illyrian mythology ensue.

Nesta’s awareness of Cassian at the dinner table had been almost painful. He had plunked down directly across from her, that stupid grin suggesting he knew exactly how much she didn’t want him to. His lips had been a little swollen from kissing her. Nothing the others would notice. But she had. 

They were all going to the theater tonight. To see the play Rhysand had taken bets on. Nesta had agreed to join days ago. The Inner Circle, as they liked to call themselves, had claimed Nesta as one of their own, but she didn’t quite see it that way…. She didn’t want to be included just because she was the High Lady’s blood. If Nesta had known that she’d end up kissing Cassian in the library and feeling…whatever it was that she had felt, she never would have agreed to go. All Nesta wanted was silence and solitude and hours in a bathtub thinking. But she couldn’t back out now. Not after Cassian had stared at her all dinner with a dare in his eyes. 

Efficiently, Nesta dragged her comb through her hair and filtered through her thoughts the way she hadn’t been able to under that stare. So she had felt a tug between them and Cassian had known where it…lived…as if he felt it too. Nesta was attracted to him. And he wanted her back, probably because she denied him. Perhaps that was all it meant. Mutual attraction. Perhaps that was how it always was when two people desired each other to a certain degree. How was she to know? Whatever she had felt for Tomas, it was not this.

But Nesta had also…somehow tasted Cassian’s worry. An empathy as pure as snow had transformed his feelings into hers for a moment. Her heart began to pound as Nesta stepped into the circle of her dark blue dress. That Nesta might feel someone else’s emotions made her throat close and her chest burn. Nesta already felt too deeply, too keenly for comfort. Adding more might undo her. She willed her hand into steadiness as she zipped the back of her gown. She reminded herself that in the library, Cassian’s worry had not overwhelmed her. Only surprised her and if she was honest, intrigued her a little. He experienced things…differently than she did. Cassian’s worry was acute and true but it wasn’t accompanied by the fear that always followed Nesta’s sharpest feelings. Worry—but without the companion fear that the worry would overtake him. Drown him. It was puzzling. And freeing, if vicariously. 

Perhaps this…empathy was an ability Nesta had inherited from the Cauldron. Some latent, heightened sensory power that activated now that the Cauldron was recast by her sister or was triggered when Nesta got close to someone. Yet she couldn’t feel Elain’s emotions. Though if Nesta was honest, she was somehow more…exposed with Cassian than she was with her own beloved sister.

Nesta swallowed as she tried to button the collar of her dress encircling her throat in a conservative cut. Her fingers shook so much she couldn’t slip the dark little cloth-covered buttons into their catch. Huffing an exasperated breath, she braced her hands on the room’s vanity and looked into the mirror. A pale, impassive face and shuttered blue-grey eyes stared back. She watched as the eyes widened, the elegantly sculpted jaw slackened and the thin gold-brown brows furrowed. Perhaps the tug was mutual attraction. Perhaps the ability to feel him like she did was a power she’d stolen. Or perhaps she was lying to herself. Perhaps Cassian was…her mate. 

Why would she be given a mate? Nesta had never…she just assumed it wasn’t for her. Even as a human, she’d never mooned like the other girls, fantasizing about legendary love bound by destiny. It wasn’t that she was skeptical exactly. It’s just that Nesta could not imagine herself…close enough to another person for that experience to belong to her.

She thought of all the cruel things she’d said to Cassian. The way she’d treated him, the incomparable warrior and kind, caring friend, as if he were nothing. As if he were beneath her. A stab of regret wounded her stomach and she placed her hand there for a moment. Would he be able to feel her emotions too? The idea had Nesta cringing. To be so exposed to another person. To him, of all the people in the world. She couldn’t bear it. She’d never be able to hide, to protect herself. Blood rushed from her head and Nesta sat heavily on the vanity stool, arms still braced before her. 

Surely, if Cassian were her mate he would annoy her less, infuriate her less. Surely, true matehood did not involve a tumultuous storm of concerns and guilt and…confusion.

But of all the sentiments the prospect of being mated to Cassian inspired, it was the blinding hope that had Nesta hanging her head. It broke in her chest like dawn after a long, cold night. “No, no,” she pleaded in a whisper. She could not afford to hope. Nesta would not hope. When it was dashed, she had no doubt that it would break her. She would finally break. Her knuckles whitened as she raised her head. She stared at the little light in her eyes until it dimmed to nothing. 

Poor Cassian. Other males would pity him. Rhysand and Azriel would pity him. Her sister would pity him. Mated to the cruel, frigid Nesta. Mor would probably offer to end his life. Mated to the witch who’d stolen from the Cauldron. Did he suspect? No, he couldn’t have. There had been no disappointment on his face when he’d touched her. He never expected her to behave a certain way. He just gave her vicious smiles. 

Perhaps it didn’t matter. Maybe matehood only meant lust and appetite and— 

What in the name of that forsaken Cauldron did a mate actually mean? Nesta needed to know right now. Anger burned through her like a match to oil. Why had Feyre never explained these things?

In a heartbeat, Nesta was down the hall and pounding on her sister’s door. After a moment, Rhysand opened it, his black shirt half-undone. Swirling black tattoos like those Nesta knew marked Cassian peaked through the open fabric.

“I need my sister,” Nesta demanded. 

Rhysand raised one eyebrow. “She and Mor left already. Feyre decided she couldn’t sit through a play without cookies.”

What was he saying? Nesta cleared her head with a little shake. They had fifteen minutes before they headed to the theater. 

“You’ll have to do then,” she told The High Lord before striding into his bedroom. 

Rhysand’s other eyebrow rose as he watched Nesta pace by the edge of the bed he shared with Feyre. 

He closed the door and slid his hands into his pockets.

“How can I be of assistance, Nesta?” he asked quietly. 

She whirled around to face him, chin held high, trying to find the words. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall. In a firm voice, she asked, “What exactly is a mate?”

Rhysand froze. He hadn’t been moving but every muscle in his body went utterly still. “Are you sure it’s me you want to be having this conversation with?” he asked carefully. 

Nesta glared at him. Rhysand had her respect and her…appreciation for the way he loved her sister. But she didn’t much like him and she was fairly certain the feeling was mutual. “I’m sure you are not the person I want to be having this conversation with,” she answered tonelessly. “But my sister is apparently out buying cookies when she could snap her fingers and have wraiths provide her—”

“They’re special cookies. Lemon iced. Made by the best baker in Vel—”

Nesta made an exasperated noise that sounded like a scream caged in her chest. Did he never stop rambling?

Rhysand cleared his throat. “What I mean to say is, are you sure you wouldn’t rather have this conversation with…another male?” He said “another male” like he had someone specific in mind.

What an idiotic thing to suggest. Nesta wondered if she could bore holes into the bat-winged bastard if she glared hard enough. 

“I’ll take that as a no,” Rhysan muttered to the floor. Then he drew a deep breath. “A mate is…a mystery. It’s a bond of fate. And sometimes that bond binds you to your equal. To the one person in all the world who you were made to fit and who was made to fit you.” A misty look came over his beautiful face and Nesta wasn’t sure whether she wanted to strike him or laugh at him or…cry. “Other times, the fate bond binds people who…are not so well suited. My parents were mated in that way.”

If Rhysand suspected why Nesta was asking about matehood, his wary glance suggested he thought she was mated in that way. The less than well suited way. Her stomach lurched as if she’d stepped off a ledge with no winged guardian to catch her. 

“What does it feel like?” Nesta inquired in a flat voice. “This bond of fate?”

Rhysand’s throat bobbed. After a moment he explained softly, “Like a bridge lies between you. And across it you can feel the other. Hear the other. Although ‘the other’ isn’t quite right because the bridge makes the two of you…one in some way.”

“What do you mean,” Nesta whispered. “you can ‘feel the other’?”

Rhysand studied her. “A pull between you. And sometimes I can feel Feyre’s emotions as if they were my own. She can also send them to me and I to her.”

A door slammed on the first floor. “Get down here or we’re leaving without you!” Amren shouted. Nesta recognized the deep voice that made some reply below but couldn’t decipher the words.

Nesta pulled on years of practice to school her features into neutrality. She stood. 

“We should leave,” she said tonelessly with a small nod toward the door. 

Rhysand sketched a bow—at her expense or to lighten the strange mood that now filled the room—and opened the door for her. 

Nesta proceeded him down the hall, straight-backed. Then stopped, turned and strode the few steps back to where he stood. “If you tell…anyone that I asked you about this, I vow to you that I will use whatever power the Cauldron gave, whatever power I stole from it to punish you.” 

Rhysand looked annoyed, and strangely a little sad, but raised his hands, palms toward her. “I’d expect nothing less, Nesta.” 

She turned and began walking once more. The High Lord had given her more questions than answers. If what she had experienced was a mate’s bond, what sort of mate was she? Was he? What if one thought they fit and the other thought they didn’t? Cassian was undoubtedly…equal to her but there was no way they fit. They combusted. Nesta wrapped her long, pale fingers around the bannister in a death grip to steady herself. She took one step down then two before a breathtaking surge of pure, elemental want rocked through her. Not unlike what starvation felt like, she thought. She stumbled a step and looked up to see Cassian leaning against the entryway, wings tucked behind him, watching her. 

Her chin jerked back in astonishment. He felt that when he looked at her? With her severe dress and dissatisfied frown and white knuckles? Nesta was too floored to be embarrassed. 

Cassian stepped forward as Nesta stumbled. Then something seemed to dawn on him as he watched her and a slow, wicked grin spread over his face. Wide-eyed, Nesta glanced behind to make sure someone else, maybe Mor, wasn’t on the stair inspiring that torturous need she—no, he felt. When she turned back around Cassian was still watching her, eyes dancing. Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter. 

The sound was so rich and deep and warm that for a moment Nesta felt her lips twitch with the desire to join him. And then she realized he was laughing at her and she smoothed her face into cool indifference and sashayed down the remaining stairs. 

He looked like he was readying to pounce so Nesta paused on the last step where she stood closer to his height. 

“I assume you’ll be staying behind,” Nesta stated coldly. 

Cassian leaned a large forearm on the carved wooden swirl at the end of the bannister. Tendrils of black ink poked through his rolled up sleeves just above his elbow. “Why’s that, Nesta?” he indulged, teeth flashing.

“I’m sure they don’t let dogs into the theater,” she snapped as she swept past. From by the open door leading onto the street, Amren snorted. Elain, Lucien and Azriel were already small silhouettes against the evening sky.

But Cassian only laughed at her again, the sound reverberating through his great chest, as if Nesta’s shock on the stairs was funny enough that he’d be laughing for some time yet. 

So when she reached the entryway, Nesta tried a new tactic. She swept the ends of her half-down hair to one side and looked back at him over her shoulder. He stopped laughing and his eyes immediately focused on the two inches of her neck the collar left exposed. And then she cast him a sweet, open smile, fluttering her eyelashes with just a hint of sarcasm, and watched as Cassian’s jaw dropped. 

***

Nesta ordered her skirts and sat down next to Feyre. They were seated in the orchestra area of an amphitheater, strings of fae lights twinkling over the crowd in the purplish twilight. Mor was passing around green, uncorked bottles of sparkling wine and swigging from one. Azriel had somehow found a cup and was pouring a portion for Elain.

“Cookie?” Feyre offered, holding a little tin of what looked like triangular pillows of golden sugar. She was flushed with delight, eyes sparkling and Nesta couldn’t blame her. The High Lady of the Night Court was surrounded by her family and friends, her mate—the good, properly fitting kind—beside her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “They’re—”

“Lemon iced. I know,” Nesta clipped. With a curl of her lip she dismissed the offer. Feyre was in too good a mood to mind and shoved one of the cookies into Rhysand’s mouth when he opened it to speak. 

A too familiar heat settled beside her and Nesta stiffened.

“Hello, Nesta.” Cassian said it like he never said it. As if she were just an acquaintance whom he hadn’t seen in a while. He stretched his long legs onto the back of the empty seat in front of him. Nesta willed herself not to look at them. They were so strong. She’d never given much thought to how strong legs could be. 

She pretended not to hear him. The silence went on for so long she fidgeted and finally observed, “They let you in.”

“They let all sorts of riffraff in here,” he told her. “You’d know if you ever had the balls to leave your room.”

Nesta’s eyebrows rose into lethal points. “Why should I leave when the company is so lacking?”

“Enjoy your own company, do you?”

“Ye—,” she started before his wicked grin tipped her off to his innuendo. She felt herself blush a little and scowled at him.

“So modest,” Cassian teased, a laugh rumbling deep in his chest. His laughter sounded like crackling coals sometimes—like a bed of them lay somewhere deep in his body. Nesta wondered if he was actually made of fire. “You didn’t speak all dinner. Don’t tell me,” Cassian leaned closer to whisper in her ear. “I rendered you speechless.” 

He was deliberately trying to unnerve her by reminding her of the library. 

“There’s a difference,” Nesta informed Cassian with a cruel smirk. “Between being speechless and deciding it’s not worth the effort to speak.” 

Cassian snorted and lifted his tanned hand to brush aside the hair she had left down, exposing her neck. She felt her body lock. He didn’t lower his hand. Instead he sifted his fingers through the ends of the loose tresses. 

“You stay silent then, Nesta, and I’ll tell you a story,” he said in a hushed, teasing voice. 

It was Nesta’s turn to snort. “A story? The big, bad Illyrian war general is going to tell me a story?” 

“Every Illyrian knows this one. It’s the story of Enalius. The subject of this play.” 

Nesta glanced sidelong at him. She remembered that name. It was the name of some mythological Illyrian warrior to whom the soldiers had compared Cassian during the war. 

“You’ll spoil the performance,” she muttered looking back to the empty stage.

The blunt tip of his index finger dipped to run along the rim of her collar. Nesta swallowed. 

“You look like you’re about to burst from the anticipation, Nesta.” He had a way of telling her things indirectly that he knew she’d never let him say outright. “I’ll just give you the background.” 

Nesta rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. His finger ran back and forth as he explained, “This play is about the Great War of the Tribes, which Enalius fought and won for the Illyrians, making us the most powerful war tribe in all the world.” Nesta let him know what she thought of that with a look but Cassian only grinned smugly. “Enalius was the greatest warrior and his victory in the Great War made him a god. That’s the story we’re going to watch. 

But before Enalius became a god, before he left to fight the Great War, Enalius was in love with a queen, Pentessilea. Pentessilea scorned him. She despised Enalius for his arrogance and mocked him for being common born. But Enalius had seen her play her lyre for her people and couldn’t stay away. He heard the call of her music, of her generosity in his sleep. So Enalius asked Pentessilea what it would take for her to give herself. And she told him the truth. That she would give herself to Enalius only if she could not refuse. And Pentessilea could not refuse a male who defeated all the enemies of her people. Only then. 

So Enalius traveled from tribe to tribe, winning the loyalty of the best men from each and eventually creating his own tribe—the Illyrians. He took the battle strengths from each culture and bound them together. Then he spent ten years driving all the other tribes from the continent so he could offer it as bounty to Pentessilea.” 

It took Nesta a moment to realize Cassian had stopped telling the story. She blinked at him. 

“What happened?” she asked softly. “Did she refuse him?”

Cassian grinned. “You’ll have to watch to find out.”

Nesta grumbled, “A rather long-winded way of telling me you’re the commander of the greatest war tribe in the world. Arrogance must run in the blood.”

His broad shoulders shook with laughter. Cassian laughed more than anyone Nesta had ever known. Smiled more too. He chucked her chin and then let his arm drop so that it draped the back of her chair. The muscles around her spine contracted. Something about the gesture…what it told everyone around them made Nesta stiff and hot. 

She tried not to think about his arm as they waited for the play to start, but it was hard, because he was so, so warm. She snatched the tin of cookies from Feyre’s lap and shoved one in her mouth, barely registering the taste. Cassian watched from the corner of his eye, lips twitching. 

She decided to head off whatever teasing comment he was about to make. “Cookie?” Nesta asked, mouth full.

Cassian’s entire body tensed when she offered him the tin. “No,” was all he said after a long moment, something like pain in his hazel eyes. He removed the arm from behind her chair, resting his hands on knees, as if to make sure they didn’t wander. The food turned to ash in her mouth. 

***

The first act of the play engrossed Nesta so deeply she forgot about the cookies and even about Cassian. Enalius, it turned out, was the greatest warrior not only because he was powerful and courageous, but also because he had uncanny clarity when it came to seeing each person’s strengths—not just his men’s but Pentessilea’s too. Instead of hating her for the impossible task she set him, Enalius loved the queen all the more for her uncompromising responsibility to her people.

By the third act, Nesta was leaning forward in her seat. A scene change erased the battlefield and presented the royal boudoir of Pentessilea herself. Nesta watched as the queen learned that the man who had been fighting to win her for ten years was dead. A sharp breath sent cold through her core as Nesta watched the queen crumple and realize too late that she hadn’t wanted Enalius to fail. Too late, Pentessilea discovered she no longer wanted to deny him. 

Nesta clasped her hands as she watched Pentessilea rend her hair and scratch her face in grief. 

“What if, what if, what if,” the chorus around the actress-queen chanted. “What if, what if, what if.”

What if she had not denied him. 

Hot tears pressed against Nesta’s eyes and before she realized what she was doing, she was hurrying past Cassian, down the few steps and turning into the shadowed passageway beneath the higher seats in the amphitheater. 

Something about that scene made Nesta feel so sick. 

***

Nesta was a tall, straight column of concentrated black in the tunnel of shadow leading out of the amphitheater. The heels of her boots echoed off the stone floor at a strict pace. Cassian lengthened his stride until he was behind her. 

Before he could reach out to grasp her, Nesta turned to face him. Her pale skin and the light caught in her unshed tears made her seem aglow. Inferior. That was how Cassian sometimes felt when he looked at Nesta. How could a male like him, a bastard who had grown up in the mud, ever be worthy of so fine, so powerful a lady? How many layers was she hiding beneath those walls? Would he ever find the heart of her? He didn’t deserve to. He’d broken promises to her. He’d failed her. Fathomless and strong. She was like the sea. And he’d let her be hurt, be touched, be changed against her will. He hadn’t been able to stop Hybern from bending that pure, steel will. Inferior, Cassian felt, and somehow responsible for those tears. Their unstable luster lurched in his gut. 

“You followed me,” she accused. 

“You’re upset,” Cassian said softly. 

She stood so still he wondered if she’d wipe her tears if they started to fall. If she’d let him. 

“I don’t know why,” Nesta said flatly. “I don’t know why I’m upset.”

Cassian watched her face and quieted himself, inside, listening for a feeling. Nesta guarded herself so stringently he rarely…felt her but sometimes he’d catch a glimpse. A split second of ice-cold fear. A blast of anger, tumultuous and fearsome as a funeral pyre ablaze. An aimless whisper of confusion. And once—a blink of the most unadulterated hope Cassian had ever known.

He still hadn’t fully reckoned with what the glimpses meant. He didn’t see the point.

She was closed now, the drawbridge up. But she’d wrung her hands when Pentessilea learned that Enalius had died.

“They become gods,” Cassian heard himself say. 

Nesta’s brows pinched slightly. She blinked. After a moment she murmured, “They do?”

“When Enalius dies, the God of the North Wind offers him immortality. To reward his skill on the battlefield and his ability to bind the strongest together. And Enalius refuses unless Pentessilea can come with. They watch over their people together, god and goddess, husband and wife.”

She was silent, staring at him. With those tears. “I’m sorry—,” he started.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Why are you crying?” 

Nesta swallowed. “When she thought he had died…” she trailed off, her words evaporating like smoke. 

Cassian took a step toward her. 

She stood her ground and looked up at his face. “Do you remember what you said to me?”

He didn’t have to ask. He knew when she meant. “Of course, I remember what I said to you,” he told her. His voice sounded rough to his ears. 

Cassian had told her the truth. That his only regret was that they had not had time. That he would follow her into the next life, and the one after that, and the one after that, until they did. 

“Why did you say it?” she demanded, a little viciously.

He stepped forward, toe-to-toe. “Why do you think, Nesta?” 

She laughed, the cruel sound echoing a little. “Useless,” she muttered and spun, walking away. 

“I thought you were done being a coward,” Cassian called. 

She whirled around, walking back to him in what Cassian could only describe as a strut. “Don’t say things like that if you can’t explain them, Cassian. I don’t care if you’re dying. Don’t say them if you can’t explain them later.” She sneered and then added, mimicking his voice just a little. “In this life or the next.” 

Something snapped and Cassian moved forward so quickly Nesta scrambled back to get out of his way until her back hit the wall. He braced his arms on either side of her head and his wings flared out to the sides. “Nesta wants me to explain. Nesta who hides in her room, who ducks into libraries, who runs out of the theater. Are you sure? Are you sure you want me to explain? If I start, how long will it take for you to mock me for being a bastard until I stop?”

She shoved him off and walked backward into the middle of the shadowed tunnel. Cassian prowled after her, wings beating in agitation.

And then the tears were falling down her face and she was using the heels of her hands to hide them. She struggled a moment when he tried to pry them away then gave up and glared up at him. The wet tracks on her skin had Cassian folding his arms and his wings around her. She was the most maddening female he had ever met and vicious as a viper but he didn’t want her to cry. Ever. 

She didn’t sob. Nesta just held herself very still and let him hold her as she cried silently. He knew because he could feel the tears soaking his shirt. 

Whatever she was feeling had the drawbridge lowering just enough that Cassian heard in a distant echo of Nesta’s voice a fragment of a single thought: losing my mind…

Cassian hugged her tighter. 

“Train with me,” he challenged. 

Nesta raised her head. “What?”

“Train with me.”

She frowned. “Is that how you comforted the Illyrians widows? Exercise?”

He grinned. “No, but it’s a good idea. Train with me. We’ll start tomorrow.”

“Why?” she asked warily.

He raised his eyebrows. “For one, you can’t fight to save your life, Nesta.”

She frowned more if that was possible. Probably because she couldn’t deny it. 

“You’re Emissary to the human lands, part of the Inner Circle now—”

“I’m not part of the Inner Circle.”

“You helped save me and I’m the favorite so, yes, you are.”

“You’re not the favorite.” Faintly, something like mirth began to dance in her eyes.

Cassian scoffed. “Am so.”

“Not Amren’s.” Her tears had stopped falling. Her hands were curled around each other and resting on his chest. 

“Especially Amren’s.”

She smiled then and the breath got stuck in his throat. Her gaze traveled along the edges of his wings, which curved above and around his shoulders. 

“I’m your favorite,” Cassian taunted. 

She pursed her lips. “The options are lacking.” 

He grinned. “Train with me tomorrow,” he said. 

A thoughtfulness settled over her. Then Nesta seemed to remember how close they were and her hands slid away from his chest. 

“Release me,” she ordered. 

Cassian retracted his wings and his arms. 

She stared him in the eye, searching for something. Then her gaze wandered to his chin and Cassian suddenly felt lazy for not having shaved that morning. 

“I’ll train with you,” she announced. Then, without another word, she turned and strode toward the opening at the other end of the tunnel. Cassian could hear the audience clapping and rising from their seats above him. 

“7 o’clock,” he called after her, his voice echoing. 

Nesta only shrugged as she kept walking. 

“If she hadn’t denied him, they wouldn’t have eternity together.”

Nesta stopped abruptly, tripping a little.

“That’s what Enalius tells Pentessilea. That everything needed to happen just as it did.” 

She didn’t turn but she looked back at him. 

“I know why they say you’re like him.” Her voice was barely audible over the sounds of the enlivening crowd, but it carried. “You see the strength in other people. You show it to them.”

Cassian watched her walk away until she disappeared.


	3. Toast & Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nessian begins training, physically and emotionally. Cassian reveals inner demons and Nesta can't hold back the fierce instinct to banish them...even if it means being vulnerable.
> 
> Blades. Banter. Neck-staring. Angsty confessions. Smoochies.

“Did you think I would go easy on you?”

Words that came from behind, snaking into her ear. Who those words belonged to was obscured by fog for a moment…then it cleared. Excitement like lightening struck her belly. Cassian. Nesta had never heard him so serious…. 

She was melting into her bed on her front, right cheek on her pillow. A heavy, burning weight draped over her back, pressing her down. Too dark to see anything but shapes and flashes of teeth. Pinned. Why did it feel so good to be pinned? A course of shivers went down her form. Breath tickled her ear, her neck. Warm puffs released on a chuckle. 

“You’re always laughing.” Her voice sounded high and young and a little far away, muffled by the pillow.

The seriousness returned. He stretched his arms until they covered hers around her head. He covered her everywhere. “I’m not laughing now, Nesta,” Cassian told her in a strained voice. 

She tried to lift her hips, to push back against him. 

“You don’t want me to go easy on you, do you, Nesta?” Cassian pressed his pelvis into her bottom. She bit down on the pillow, the cotton squeaking a little between her clenched teeth. She could feel him.

He rocked against her. “Do you, Nesta?” 

She shook her head.

He rocked against her again. “Do you, Nesta?” 

“No.” Her voice was almost petulant, a whimper, as she raised herself to meet him as best she could.

His warm grip covered the points of her hips, lifting her. But the movement didn’t quite stop and Nesta was drifting toward the ceiling of the room. Or the bed and floor were dissolving from beneath her…. 

Nesta jerked awake with a start, the bed sheets tangled between her legs and up around her shoulder. Her heart was pounding. She pushed herself up a little and saw a wet spot of drool on her pillow. She whacked it to the floor and rolled onto her back, covering her eyes with a hand. 

She felt uncomfortable. Exhausted but with too much energy at the same time. The dream replayed in her mind before her heartbeat could settle. She curled onto her side, giving voice to the groan in her muscles. 

Agreeing to train with Cassian had been a mistake. A grievous mistake. She was so physically drained she went to sleep before nine o’clock every night in order to wake up at dawn. Her whole body hurt like a headache. So unrelentingly tight, so much tension seizing her all over. Muscles she didn’t even know she had—where her neck met her shoulders, bridging her inner and outer thighs, her calves…oh Cauldron, her calves—felt like they were full of acid. She woke up every morning starving. 

And now this. Dreams that weren’t nightmares but that had her waking up unrested. Seeing Cassian every day, half-clothed in the sun was rotting her mind. He usually didn’t break a sweat until she was already disgustingly soaked but by the end of the first hour he would be glistening in a way that was so supremely unfair. Smelling him. Feeling him near her. On her. Every day. 

“Did you think I would go easy on you?”

That’s what Cassian had said the first time he’d sent Nesta sprawling to the floor and pinned her. 

The only thing keeping Nesta going was the hope that she might one day catch him off his guard. She wasn’t delusional. She would never best him. Not in this. She wasn’t entirely sure anyone could. But she might drop him on his ass once and get to watch that smug grin falter. Watch his limbs stutter for purchase in the stupid way she knew hers did every time he dropped her. That and the sword kept her going. To his surprise and her own, Nesta liked the sword.

She wrenched the sheet to free herself but only ended up more entangled. She bucked and when that didn’t work, bucked some more, because she felt ridiculous and had to get free. It ended up wound around her forearm. Nesta sprang from the bed and threw the sheet violently on top of her discarded pillow. She stalked, shoulders back, to the bathroom and into the shower, yanking on the water, relishing the coldness. The numbness.

Another day of torture. 

***

The stairs creaked above and Cassian’s eyes shot to the kitchen door. It would be her—Rhys and Feyre spent mornings in bed. Through the courtyard window, dawn was a fuzzy blur of orange and indigo. Cassian tried to quiet the anticipation that sparked in his chest, schooling his features so he didn’t look too expectant. 

In the seat at the kitchen table beside him, Az pretended not to notice Cassian’s eagerness. Or maybe he didn’t. The shadows swirling around the spymaster seemed to quicken, as if they were waking up or apprising him of what he’d missed while sleeping however many hours Az let himself sleep. Cassian clapped him on the shoulder and Az gave him a lazy smile. Elain refilled Azriel’s cup of tea, steam billowing up in a white, fragrant cloud. 

Cassian glanced at Mor who sat at the head of the table. She was smirking at him sleepily, the rich early light painting her face in a dreamy glow. She looked hungover.

“Enjoying your new trainee?” Mor asked. 

Mor was always watching. Cassian knew she had his best interest at heart, but he sometimes wished she’d just let things be. 

Cassian ate half his piece of toast in one bite. When Elain wasn’t gardening, she was baking bread and whatever this was, it was damn good. Cass took his time chewing as he regarded Mor. 

“That I am,” he said, after swallowing a gulp of tea. “I forgot what it’s like to train someone who actually listens.”

Mor raised one eyebrow as if to say,“Oh? Is that all?” 

Cassian’s attention was pulled away when Nesta stalked into the kitchen. He clocked the tightness in her shoulders and the tense little frown on her face. She wore the training uniform she’d picked for herself. Illyrian leathers, which clung to her legs and ass in wonderful ways, on the bottom and a white shirt—almost a smock—on top. The shirt was not entirely practical—with its high collar and tiny pearl buttons that tucked the billowy sleeves at her wrists. Tape was wrapped around her hands to protect the hilt blisters she’d got after he started her with a training sword three days ago. 

She poured herself a cup of tea at the stove, giving Elain a discrete kiss on the cheek. Cassian watched. To someone who didn’t make a study of Nesta it was a small gesture. But to someone who knew her, it was something else. A softening.

“Good morning, Nesta,” Mor said to her back.

Nesta didn’t bother to look over her shoulder. “She’s here. Great.”

Mor’s lips twitched. 

“Hello, Nesta,” Cassian said, letting her hear the laughter in his voice.

Cupping her tea in both, taped up hands, Nesta sat gingerly in the empty seat across from him.

“You.” Her blue-grey eyes honed in on him in a death stare. 

Mor snorted. 

“I’ve decided to no longer train with you,” Nesta announced.

Cassian cracked his knuckles and smiled. “You say that every morning.”

She sipped her tea and stared him down. 

“How’s it going? Your training?” Azriel asked Nesta. Cass’ lips twitched. Az was trying to draw her vicious attention away from him. A futile effort.

“Great,” she said, still glaring at Cassian.

“Kicked Cassian’s ass yet?”

“Not yet,” she replied. The death stare started to morph into a depraved grin. Like she was imagining it. 

Cassian crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair, grinning. 

“Better eat up,” he told her. “You’re going to need it.”

She made a big show of devouring a boiled egg, somehow managing to turn chewing into an act of revenge. 

“What happened to your hands?” Elain piped up, concern in her mild eyes. It was always alarming to see such gentleness on features so similar to Nesta’s. He wasn’t sure if he liked it. 

Nesta glanced down at them like she’d forgotten about the tape. 

“Blisters,” Cassian explained. “Nesta’s tender lady hands have to get used to holding weapons.” 

She bared her teeth at him. Cassian laced his hands behind his head and leaned farther back in his chair. Her eyes dipped to his chest. He grinned more broadly then noticed the purple ringing them. 

“You looked tired,” he said, lowering his arms. 

“Do I?” she demanded, as if it was his fault. He supposed it was. He’d been working her hard. But they finished before dusk everyday. She had plenty of time to rest. 

“Are you sleeping?” He rocked back and forth a little on the back two legs of his chair. If Nesta hadn’t been sleeping, then he had definitely been working her too hard. 

She laughed darkly. “I’m sleeping.” She adjusted her weight like she was hurting. Like she had a sore ass. Cassian grinned again. 

“Tender?” he taunted. He couldn’t help it. 

Nesta leaned forward, pressing both palms onto the table in front of her. In a deadly voice she vowed, “One day I am going to knock you on your ass, Cassian. It won’t be today. It won’t be tomorrow. But one day, I am going to get you when you don’t see it coming. And then all this misery will have been worth it.”

The entire room was pregnant with silence. Then Cassian laughed so loudly Mor dropped her head onto her elbows. 

He let his chair fall forward and braced his forearms on the table, leaning toward her. They stared at each other, Nesta with lethal promise, Cassian laughing. 

“I can’t wait to watch you try,” he told her honestly. 

Her eyes narrowed. Then she reached forward and took his remaining toast. 

***

A little pang agitated his gut as Cassian held Nesta in the air and glanced down at her drooping eyelids. They’d end early today so she could catch up on rest, he decided. And somehow he’d make sure she took a hot bath to soothe her tired muscles.

In a week’s time Nesta had gotten used to him enough that she didn’t argue every morning when he reached for her to fly them to the training ring. She didn’t insist on being held by Az. She didn’t storm up the stairs to wake Feyre, which had been insulting but also amusing, because it incensed Rhysand. Now, after six days, Nesta stepped into Cassian’s embrace without thinking. She was even relaxed in his arms. It felt like victory.

While she dozed, he took a long pull of her scent. Frost and licorice. Her bony hips dug a little into his lower abdomen, her arms around his neck, her warm breasts pressed between their two bodies. What would it be like to hold her like this while she really wanted to be held? Cassian swallowed and focused on the flight path upward to the training ring. 

When he set her down, Nesta dropped into the stretches he’d shown her, breathing as he’d taught her, deeply, unhurriedly. She took training seriously, which made him proud. Of himself, of her, he wasn’t sure. Of course, the first day had been a disaster. Nesta had been so tightly wound she couldn’t remember his instructions. All her focus has been on her pride—refusing to make any real effort in order to save face when he beat her. 

So Cassian had dropped her on her ass first thing. He crossed his arms as he watched her stretch, savoring the memory of Nesta red-faced and spitting mad. She’d almost used her power on him, the unspoken threat surging in the air around her. But he’d asked her if she expected him to go easy on her and after that, Nesta had given herself to the challenge. 

“Are you going to stretch or are you going to stare at me?” she said with her mouth by her knee. 

Cass flashed her a grin and kept looking. “Stretched already this morning.”

She frowned. “What time do you get up?”

“Before the sun.”

She mumbled something about “bats” and “nocturnal” into her other knee.

“Let me enjoy the view in peace.” 

She just rolled her eyes and not for the first time this week Cassian remarked that when Nesta had something to focus on, she was less jumpy and, therefore, less cruel. She conserved her energy. He’d enjoyed breaking her pride a little bit. He’d certainly savored jolting her out of its clutches, knocking that stiffness away. But Cassian almost wished Nesta didn’t apply herself the way she did. Her focus made him want her more. Her budding potential as a truly skilled warrior was a layer he hadn’t guessed at and it was almost unfair. She was already so impossibly enticing. So above him. 

Nesta rose and Cassian stripped off his shirt, pretending not to see her look. This was one of his favorite moments of the day. When he took off his shirt, her drawbridge lowered just a fraction and Cassian caught a glimpse of Nesta’s emotions. The aching need made him…honored and humble, if he was honest. But her curiosity had him clenching his teeth to keep from doing something foolish. 

“The hand-to-hand series we did yesterday is warm-up for today,” he told her, flicking his fingers so she’d assume her guard. 

Uncertainty passed over her face but Nesta got into position. Her eyes narrowed in concentration. He struck out with his right hand in the direction of her fact and she blocked him with her left forearm.

“Good,” he praised, as they fell into the rhythm of the exercise.

Left strike, right block. Then he moved lower. Right strike to ribs, left block. 

“Good,” he said again. 

Left strike to the ribs. She blocked him even though he put a little more speed into the strike. The sun, now arisen, began to beat down on them.

“Good.”

“Don’t coddle me,” she ordered.

“It’s not coddling. It’s feedback.” 

“Just tell me if I do something wrong.”

“How about you don’t tell me how to do my job?”

They shifted—Nesta on offensive, Cassian on defensive. She struck so swiftly he nearly missed the block.

“Hah,” she said, brow furrowed in focus.

“I’m distracted.”

She took the bait. “By what?”

“That shirt. Do you wear it to torture me?”

“Huh?” 

“It’s transparent when you sweat.”

She fumbled and he stepped into her guard space, reassuming the offensive. She yielded one step, two.

“I don’t wear it for you,” she hissed. “I’m not a cheat.”

“An advantage is an advantage,” he breathed, proving his point when she moved to block his strike too late. “Don’t expect the fight to be fair.” 

“You’ve told me that twenty times,” she complained. 

“You’re still not getting it.”

A dark look was on her face. She could be a sore loser. Cassian liked it. Nesta who robbed the Cauldron was pissed she hadn’t mastered hand-to-hand in a week.

They broke from the first series and Cassian clapped her on the back. “Good work.” She shrugged off his hand. 

She went to the water pitcher, drank and then unbuttoned the collar of her shirt. She poured some water into the cup of her palm and pressed it to her neck. Droplets hovered then slipped down the pale column, somehow making her scent stronger in his nose.

“You’re not on break yet,” he growled. 

“Don’t expect the fight to be fair,” she said but returned to where they sparred. 

Cassian handed her the training blade he’d picked for her. Slightly heavier than the sword she’d be fit for so that when she got her own blade, it would feel light. 

“Linear series one.”

Nesta walked back until there were five feet between them. Cassian drew his sword and began the attack sequence down the line between them. She moved in that way younger warriors did when they found the weapon that made sense to them. 

The clap of metal striking metal sang. 

“Nice,” he grunted. 

“I. Don’t. Need. Your. Praise,” Nesta gritted, blocking his blows on the first three words and delivering two of her own on the rest. 

Cassian grinned. “Very nice.” That unholy promise reappeared in her eyes.

Nesta folded her left forearm, tucking it behind her back. He’d seen her do it before. He hadn’t taught her that. It wasn’t Illyrian technique and like everything she did, it both infuriated and intrigued him. 

“What’s that?” Cassian asked, jutting his chin at her elbow and then mimicking the posture. 

She glanced down as if she hadn’t noticed she was doing it then quickly raised her guard before he arced down his blade, cutting off his advantage. She was learning. The clash of swords rang in his ears.

Nesta shrugged. “It’s how I saw men hold themselves sword-fighting when I was young.” 

Something bitter and sour awoke in his belly. When Nesta was young, she was a wealthy merchant’s daughter. The men she’d watched fight were probably noblemen in formal duels. He glanced at her posture again. It was courtly, like how Beron and his sons held themselves when they worked violence. Cassian could just see her perched on the arm of that kind of male—faceless, pompous humans or some self-important High Fae. She would fit in so well. She’d look like she belonged. And they…Cassian knew just how those pricks would tend her like a wild bird, showing off her beauty and strength and deadliness to other men. Look what I have, they’d say to each other as if she were a prize. A weapon.

Cassian sped up his offense until Nesta was stumbling back to get away from the strikes she was too slow to meet. He disarmed her, the training sword clanging to the floor. 

“Doesn’t do much good,” he told her. “Besides making you stand straighter.” He stalked a few paces away and ran his forearm over his forehead. 

She folded her arms. “I don’t get it,” she said.

“Get what?”

“You’re better than those males.” He wasn’t sure how Nesta knew what he was thinking—because she could read it on his face or because she could hear his mind.

He half-turned and raised one eyebrow. “I know that.” He flashed a cocky grin.

“Do you?” she tilted her head and studied him. He resisted the urge to shift under her unnerving attention. “I don’t mean you’re a better warrior. That’s obvious. I mean you’re a better person. A better male. Do you not know that?”

Cassian looked out at the sliver of Velaris he could see over the edge of the roof. He’d never really thought of himself as open—he’d never thought in those terms before Nesta. But since knowing her, Cassian had realized that openness was an act of bravery. So he shrugged and said, “I know they’re pricks. I know I’m not. But being an Illyrian bastard fucks with your head.” 

“Because your father abandoned you. Because they made you an outcast.” She stood there, still and straight, watching him.

He shook out his sweaty hair then began gathering it at the back of his head. “My father was such a prick I didn’t really care if he wanted me. I didn’t want to be wanted by someone who could do what he did to my mother.” He tied a haphazard bun and let his hands drop to his sides. “And I had it much better than others in the Illyrian camps. Better than the women. Better than the men who didn’t want to be warriors.”

Cassian squinted against the sun. 

“So…what then?” Nesta asked softly. 

Like any act of courage, opening to her, even her, wasn’t easy. Not about this. It wasn’t comfortable. But it felt true. And Cassian had long ago realized that what separated the warriors from the butchers was respect for truth.

“Something about the mud,” Cassian explained. “When you’re a kid and you’re living in mud, when it’s all over your clothes, your bed, your skin, your face. It’s hard not to start to feel like you’re part of the filth. When my father’s men left me in that foreign camp, the warriors didn’t want anything to do with me. So I had to make my shelter in places out of their way. Usually that was by the latrine pit. When you live next to shit long enough…you start to feel like shit. Smelling it all the time. You start to at least wonder if maybe you are shit.”

He forced himself to look her in the eye. Nesta didn’t speak for a long moment. Then she said, “I want to kill them.” Her face was smooth with wrath.

“Let’s get you there,” Cassian said, pointing at her with his blade. “Linear series two. ”

***

Nesta didn’t raise her sword. Cassian was poised to strike, set with effortless attention. But something dark lingered in his hazel-gold eyes. 

A burst of incredulous laughter escaped her lips and hurt rippled over not just his face but his body too. 

But it was so absurd. That something dark should haunt him. It was wrong. Cassian was all flame and warmth. So generous and kind and patient, with coal-fire laughter and hugs full of heat. How did shadows even dare approach him? How could they survive long enough to touch him? She wasn’t lying—she wanted to kill the people who had made him suffer. Those stupid fucking warriors excluding him, making the best among their kind sleep in the dirt next to their waste. His evil father, resigning a little boy to that fate. She’d like to wrap her hands around his throat and watch the light leave his eyes. 

Nesta dropped her sword and walked until she was an inch away from Cassian. With a steady hand, Nesta touched one side of his face. Concern, confusion, hunger, shame—they all buoyed up from the black depths of his gilded eyes. Her thumb stroked over his cheek. And then froze. There…beneath it all…was something empty. Some kind of bleak resignation. 

And then Nesta realized. The hope she felt terrified her, terrorized her even. Her hope forced her to walk a precipice’s edge, charging her with fear that made it difficult to be still and impossible to be soft. But Cassian…a part of Cassian—that little boy sleeping in the mud by the latrine—felt none at all. Some part of him was still convinced he belonged in the filth.

That would not do. 

Nesta covered his other cheek with her other hand. He watched her, a little warily. Then his eyes widened as she leaned forward and kissed his lips. It was different than the way he’d kissed her in the library. The opposite, perhaps. Unhurried, sweet and soft. As if they had forever to kiss each other, as if they could afford to be lazy with their kissing, as if this kiss was one of so many it didn’t have to be remarkable. And yet a razor-sharp tension held his body.

When she pulled away, his eyes were hooded, almost sleepy. A pang stabbed her heart. That was how Cassian should always look, Nesta thought. Content, not empty. Not hungry. He shouldn’t have to want. He should never think it was his place to want. He had to know, Nesta decided.

“There is no one above you,” she told him in an unfaltering voice. 

He stared at her. Then he licked his lips. “Tell me what that means.”

Nesta swallowed. It wasn’t easy, opening to him. Not about this. In fact, it felt a bit like illness. But Nesta didn’t really give a damn. Cassian did not deserve to carry emptiness and shadow, and if she had to lay herself bare to make that clear then so be it.

“I don’t know why you want me,” she said. “But if I learned how to be with someone, there is no one I would choose over you. Only a fool would.” 

They stared at each other in silence. Then Cassian hooked his arm around her and pulled her to him. The back of her skull rested in the cradle of his elbow. A slow, great grin spread across his face and lit his eyes. Nesta nodded her head once in satisfaction. 

“No one you’d choose over me, is it?” His eyes danced an inch from hers.

“Don’t get cocky. You’re still insufferable.”

“I am?”

“In many ways.”

“Which ways?” His teeth were white against his tanned face. 

“You’re arrogant, loud, and pushy. You have terrible table manners.”

“But there’s no one above me.”

“No,” she said seriously. “There’s no one above you.”

Then Nesta could take no more. She had to look away when Cassian let her see…let her feel… She didn’t want to cry in front of him again. 

He tugged her closer until their fronts touched. 

“Can I?” he asked. 

“Can you what?”

“Kiss you.” 

She thought of that little boy—with scraggly dark hair and scabbed scrapes and too-worn clothes and golden eyes—living in the mud. Believing he belonged there. She straightened her shoulders. 

“Yes,” Nesta said. 

Cassian touched his lips to hers. Breath by breath, they fell back into the slow, lulling exploration she’d begun. Nesta loved how firm his mouth was, how sure his tongue. Only this time instead of a never-ending banquet, the kiss was something else. With each pass of his lips, his warmth, Cassian communicated what Nesta hadn’t been able to bear before. What had made her look away. His gratitude. Hot tears slid down her cheeks but before the humiliation could make Nesta stiffen, Cassian grasped her face to that they fell onto his fingers and she could no longer feel them.


	4. Innocence & Jealousy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slow-ass burn continueth. These two are stumbling to find their way to being truly close to each other. Nesta navigates the in-between after she kissed Cassian and discovers a mechanism that helps her (sort of) ask for what she wants. They fall into their first date together (to be continued). Nesta has a jealousy hissy fit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Apologies for typos. I'm in the process of studying for an exam so I've been less diligent.*

Nesta walked in between the lines of lemon trees. The fresh smell of citrus hovered all around her. The midday sun stroked the green, glossy leaves and seemed to cast a halo around the grove. Nesta felt as if she had fallen into a dream or another land. The memory of her mortal life twinkled in her mind. She supposed she had fallen just so. 

It was the Summer Solstice and the Night Court celebrated by picking the first harvest of citrus. The orchards sprawled across the lower hills that rolled against the base of the great, reddish mountains that guarded Velaris. 

The rest of her family…and their attachments were back in the orange groves. When Mor and Feyre had begun to throw the fruit at each other, Nesta had slipped away. Now she was alone and thankful for it. She rolled an orange between her palms. Nesta felt a new strength and, even more delicious, a new space in her body as she walked. Cassian had made her strong. She felt the hang of her skirts around her hips. Nesta hadn’t realized how much pleasure she took in wearing a dress until she’d started living in leathers. 

She pondered the male who trained her as she rolled the orange. He was so…different from her. Her own rage at his past—at what had been done to him—still kindled in her belly. But now that time had passed, Nesta marveled just as much at how effortless it had seemed for Cassian to tell her his shame. As if he trusted her. How was it that the greatest military commander in all of Prythian had such stores of trust? She laughed a little at the contradiction of it and then sobered. It wasn’t funny really. She inhaled the lemon air.

Nesta wondered. She wondered what it would have been like if she had met Cassian before. Before the Archeron wealth had guttered. Before Feyre had been forced to bear the burden of their survival. Before that small, sharp part of Nesta had hoped for death—all their deaths—just to spite her father. Before their fates had become entangled with Prythian’s. She wondered what it would have been like if she and Cassian had been of the same kind and tragedy hadn’t made her hard. 

She could see him. She could see what Cassian might have been like as an unburdened youth—burning with energy, bursting with laughter, brimming with kindness. Who would she have been? Nesta could not see it. What would they have done to get to know one another? These imagined selves—the boy with the hapless grin and the blank that was Nesta’s innocence. Would he have brought her flowers and tokens? Would she have waited for him on a bridge? Nesta wanted to know him. She wanted whatever journey that invisible girl and that boy would have taken. But she didn’t know what it looked that. And she certainly didn’t know what it looked like between a centuries old Illyian warrior and a bitter, thieving witch. 

Did Cassian realize that training with him had changed more than her body? Did he know that it had made Nesta wonder? Sometimes she thought he did and that had been his design all along. When Cassian wasn’t looking, Nesta would stare at his hands. She hasn’t realized she was doing it at first. But she knew everything about them. Their tanned skin, the difference in the shades between his palms and his knuckles. The network of veins that led up to his broad fingers. His short, clean nails. His thick wrists. The straightness of his thumbs. Sometimes looking at them made her want to cry. Had Cassian known that training with him would make her realize she was lonely? 

Nesta tried very hard not to think about his kisses, about how his mouth scalded hers. She’d never known that a mouth could burn. But even when she was successful in pushing away the memories, Nesta found herself looking at other male’s mouths and thinking, smugly, that they were probably not as hot as Cassian’s. As if such a silly thing were a point of comparison. As if he belonged to her. 

A shadow passed over the ground and Nesta looked up from the orange she held. She caught a brief glimpse of his wings, backlit by the sun—black, red, gold—before Cassian landed. 

“Hello, Nesta.” 

She drew a deep breath. “Hello, Cassian.”

He fell into stride with her—that playful glint in his eyes. “Had a feeling I’d find you with the lemons.” He folded his arms across his chest.

Nesta wasn’t in the mood for teasing. She didn’t want that to be all there was between them. She loved to fight with him—no, she loved to best him. But would they always have to back each other into a corner in order to get close? Would every kiss have to prove a point? So Nesta didn’t reply. But she smiled, a quiet half-smile at him. Cassian looked at her mouth and then at her eyes. 

“Are you alright?” He unfolded his arms.

“Yes,” Nesta said, deciding it was true. 

They walked between the rows of trees. The sun caught the blades of grass and turned them yellow. She could feel Cassian watching her. 

“You’re quiet.” 

Nesta couldn’t help but file away the unease she heard in his voice. Perhaps she’d use her quiet against him. But for today, Nesta just smiled at him again. Then laughed a little at the expression on his face. She filed that away too. If she ever wanted to shock Cassian, all she had to do was smile at him twice in the span of minutes.

“I’m fine,” she told him. “Just in a strange mood.”

She felt Cassian’s eyes all over the side of her face.

“Are you unhappy?” He asked it like he was bracing himself for the answer. 

She was lonely. It wasn’t quite the same thing. And it wasn’t quite different. “What would you do if I answered yes?”

Nesta looked into his eyes and watched the light glinting off the flecks of gold there. He rubbed his chin and Nesta could not resist looking his hand. The surge of longing made her draw another deep breath. 

“I would do whatever I could to make that change,” Cassian told her.

“Like what?” They weren’t walking anymore. 

He considered her for a moment, searching her. The impulse to hide flared up and then died. Let him see, she thought.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d start with the things that make me happy. I’d offer to take you flying. To bring you high up so you could see this place from above and the sea out beyond.”

Nesta wanted to see the neat rows of trees from on high. She really wanted to feel Cassian hold her. She put the orange in her pocket and stepped forward until there was an inch of space between them. She could see a triangle of sun-drenched skin above his shirt. She carefully put her arms around his neck, barely touching him.

When Cassian didn’t move, she said, “Up.” 

And they shot into the warm, gold sky. 

***

He didn’t swoop and dive. Cassian worked his wings straight up until they were high above the citrus orchards. The air was cooler here and it pulled at Nesta’s hair and skirts. 

“See Velaris?” Cassian murmured. There was pride in his voice and Nesta remembered what she knew of the sacrifices Cassian had made for his city. 

But she didn’t bother to look. Instead she shifted her head so that his breath fell on her neck. His arm was a band across her chest, his hand was braced over the cap of her shoulder. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see it. 

“See the Sida? See the sea?” 

Nesta nodded but kept her eyes closed. Being held by Cassian felt like being cloaked in gentle flames. Since she had kissed him on the roof of the House of Wind, they had occupied a strange in-between where they mostly maintained an awkward distance from each other physically. But then sometimes they would just find themselves touching. She would catch him looking at her lips and he’d back off. She would reach out to touch his hand and then pull away. And then sometimes he would hug her from behind and she would reach around to grab his head and keep him close.

Now Nesta let the fire of his body surround hers. The image of that boy was so alive in her mind. She could see how his fire would have made him a little too eager for a fight. But it would have been quick to die too. She could see him—some loping creature dealing blows and then shaking hands with that open grin. 

Nesta wondered. She wondered if Cassian could see her the way she saw him. If he could fill the blind spot. If he could supply the missing piece. 

“Can you see me?” she asked. She felt him tuck his chin to look at her and fluttered open her eyes. The feeling of having fallen into a dream was more pronounced in the sky. “Can you see what I would have been like if…if none of it had happened?”

The bands of his arms tightened just a fraction around her. “If none of what had happened?” 

She did look out at the sea and at Velaris then, glittering in the light. “If I were a girl who’d never suffered. If I were innocent,” she said. 

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Yes. I can.” She heard a hint of laughter in his voice, as if he were enjoying the idea.

“Tell me.” 

He dropped his chin above her collarbone and Nesta closed her eyes again. 

“Quiet,” Cassian said. “And serious. That’s just you. Thinking about how things work and why. But you’d be curious. So curious. You’d get lost, I bet. Lose track of time. You’d have to make your way home after dark, worrying your sisters sick. They’d ask you the same question three times. You’d have to be pulled out of your thoughts.” Nesta smiled. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps if she had fewer wounds she would contemplate guarding them less and look out into the world. 

“Stubborn,” Cassian continued. “More…forgiving than you are now but still stubborn as a mule. Freer maybe. You’d argue, you’d still be a sore loser, but you’d let it go if something better to do came along.” 

More forgiving. Freer. “She sounds lovely.” This girl who Nesta had never known.

Cassian turned his head so his mouth brushed against her neck. “She does. But she’s not who I want.”

They had an unspoken promise. Not to say the word that floated at the edge of Nesta’s mind day and night. Not to speak the name for the charge in the air between them. Mate. If Nesta asked him, would Cassian break the promise? 

Nesta took the chance. “Why do you want me?” She would rather know if it was some bond that might be blood or might be fate that kept him close when she was neither merciful nor free. When she was cruel and bound. For whether matehood was lust or destiny—neither was her. And Nesta wanted to be wanted for her.

“I like you vicious.” Cassian rubbed his rough cheek against her neck. “It makes you unafraid of me. I like you armored. It means your trust has to be earned. I like you cold, because it makes your heat that much hotter. I like you hardened, because it makes your softness that much softer. I hate that you’ve suffered, but I would never understand you if you hadn’t. Because I’ve suffered.” 

Nesta let her head fall back against his chest. He nudged his nose against her jaw to give himself better access to her neck. She reached up and slid her hand over his. He wasn’t the boy she could see in her mind and she wasn’t the girl he could see in his. But that didn’t mean that boy and that girl couldn’t help them. Nesta wanted to know him. Everything about him. This male, the one who held her right now and kissed her neck like a starving man gifted with a feast. 

“If I were that girl you described, what would you do with me?” she asked. 

She felt his lips move into a smile. “Do you really want me to answer that, Nesta?” Cassian asked against her skin. 

A blush heated her face and Cassian chuckled and scraped his teeth along her neck.

“What would you do to get to know her?” Nesta forced the question out. 

Cassian stilled. She felt his eyelashes sweep the edge of her jaw when he blinked. “I would show her Velaris,” he said. 

Nesta swallowed. “Will you show me Velaris?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately, voice a little thick. “When?”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight.” 

***

The people of Velaris knew Cassian. For some reason, Nesta hadn’t been expecting that. She hadn’t anticipated how they came up to him. Some hugged him. Others thanked him. One ancient woman kissed his hand. And the younger women…Nesta knew then that she was not meant to have a mate. Some looked at Cassian from under their eyelashes. Some gave him bold, inviting smiles. And each time, Nesta had to wrestle the urge to grip them by the throat and toss them over the side of the bridge into the Sida. Even the ones who looked at the ground like they knew they had no chance at his attention. Even their mournful modesty made Nesta want to hurt them, because it smelled just a little bit like hope. 

Cassian didn’t seem to notice. He was gracious and funny, throwing back his head and laughing at their jokes, hugging those who thanked him. Cassian slung his arm around her shoulder and introduced her to some of them. Nesta nodded coolly at the strangers, her eyes drifting to the setting sun on the water. She felt like a shadow beside a flame. They were so different from one another.

“Come on,” Cassian said, guiding her toward a narrow alleyway. “Fewer people along the back routes.”

The buildings on either side were tall and painted in faded colors. Laundry flapped from strings attached across small balconies on either side. The way was so narrow they had to walk in single file. Nesta looked at how Cassian’s broad back swallowed up the space. Her footsteps echoed much louder than his.

“Where exactly are we going?” Her voice was cool, her back stiff, arms crossed in front of her breasts. 

“My favorite place in Velaris.”

“The whorehouse?” It was out before Nesta could bite the sharp remark back. Cassian stopped in his tracks and turned to face her. 

“I think even a virgin can see that I don’t need to buy my comfort.” His voice was a little deadly. But it was the way he said the word “virgin” that stung. Like she was a child who was shut out from these…kinds of things. From the kinds of things those women on the bridge promised him with their eyes.

Nesta smiled cruelly and shrugged. “Old habits die hard. I doubt the Illyrian women were throwing themselves at you.” 

It was a low blow, she knew. To remind him of his past exclusion, to jab his weak spot. But Nesta couldn’t quite care. Something like rage threatened to erupt from her.

Cassian’s lip curled back and Nesta knew he was about to snarl something at her but then his face cleared. And then she couldn’t see his face at all, only his chorded neck as he guffawed, the sound echoing off the sides of the buildings. She was trapped in a tunnel of Cassian’s laughter at her expense. This city was overrated. 

“You’re jealous.” Cassian said it like it was a dawning realization. Jeal-o-o-ous. Before she could respond, he was already turned around and walking away from her. 

Nesta stomped to keep up. 

“Jealous? Jealous of the old woman you so graciously offered your hand?”

Cassian chuckled. Cauldron, he was infuriating. 

“You caught me,” Nesta said snidely. “If only I had my way, I’d fawn and shower you with praise.” 

They emerged from the alley onto a quieter street. As soon as Nesta was beside him, Cassian hooked his arm around her neck and tugged her against his chest. She made a muffled noise and tried to push him off but he only looked down indulgently. He was loud, coveted by women young and old and grabby. Maybe Nesta didn’t want to know him after all.

“I don’t want them,” Cassian said, leading her South down the street. “You should know that I don’t want them.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Nesta struggled to separate herself from him without looking like an utter fool in public. Cassian nodded amiably at a group of passersby. 

“Release me,” Nesta ordered. She put that edge of steel in her voice to make sure he obeyed. 

But instead Cassian pulled her closer. “Can’t.”

“Why is that?” she snapped. 

“If I don’t claim you for all to see, your jealousy will get the better of you and you’ll say something you don’t mean.” 

Nesta stopped struggling. And then she was laughing. There was something delightful, she realized, in being read so accurately even about things she did not want to reveal. 

“What if I promise to behave?” Nesta asked, her face still pressed against his chest.

Cassian chuckled. “You don’t know how to behave, Nesta. It’s part of your charm.” 

***

The sun had set. Velaris was bathed in a soft, violet light by the time Cassian finally said, “Here we are.” 

They were outside a shop at the back edge of one of the market Palaces. When Nesta oriented herself, she realized Cassian had taken them on a long, circuitous route. There were no windows but on the closed shop door the image of an open fan was branded. No, not a fan Nesta discovered upon closer look. An array of weapons—arrow, axe, sword, scythe. Nesta looked at Cassian. He was staring at the door with the eagerness of that imaginary boy in her head. A weaponry was Cassian’s favorite place in Velaris. Of course. 

He opened the door with a broad hand and ushered Nesta in with a light swat on her skirts. She was too distracted to reprimand him. The dark interior was a long, wide room. Tables ran in orderly rows and on them were swaths of velvet in varying degrees of decay. Rich, black velvet. Faded, shredded velvet. On the cloth, lay instruments—weapons. But it was above that distracted Nesta. 

From the ceiling beams hung all manner of knives, swords, cleavers, daggers. They swayed a little, tinkering against one another although there was no breeze. Their metal glittered dully. Like a night sky after a rain when the first stars peak out. Cassian was shaking hands with the shopowner. They were laughing and speaking but Nesta didn’t bother to make out the words. She stared up at the strange sight.

“It’s beautiful,” she realized. 

Nesta looked at Cassian. His eyes were soft and he gestured her over. The shopowner returned from somewhere hidden with a long box in his hands. He opened it and Nesta gasped. Inside lay a sword, straight and sharp. The hilt was black, the grip padded with soft leather she could smell. Etched at the base of the blade was a curling design. Like billows of smoke.

“It’s beautiful,” she repeated but there was awe in her voice now. 

“It’s yours,” Cassian said.

“Mine?” Nesta’s brow furrowed. 

“Yours.” It took her a moment to remember that Cassian had told her she would one day have her own sword. That the one she used in training wasn’t made for true fighting. 

“I love it.” The words came out so quickly they blurred together. 

Cassian chuckled. He grabbed the tangle of leather beside the box and began to strap it across Nesta’s back. “It’s an Illyrian blade,” he told her. “Custom made for your size and strength. Wear it down your back.” The weight of the sword settled against her as Cassian sheathed it along her spine. Nesta felt a bit ridiculous standing there in her dress with an Illyrian sword down her back. And yet she didn’t want to take it off.

“I’ll look like a fool wearing this around Velaris.”

Cassian grinned. “I’ll carry it. Try unsheathing. See if it feels right.”

Cassian had her do a series of tests until he was satisfied before they left. He didn’t even pay the shopkeeper. She suspected he had a line of credit that vastly extended the ample one Rhysand and Feyre had given her. 

“I’ll carry it,” Nesta said, holding out her hand. It was nearly dark out now.

Cassian smiled, teeth flashing, and handed her the box that contained her new sword. 

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for having this made.”

He shrugged, his grin easy. “All my warriors have one.”

His warriors. Nesta didn’t mind being one of Cassian’s warriors. As long as she was something else, something more too. She thought back to that boy in her mind and the girl who was forgiving and free.

She cleared her throat. “If I were that girl you described,” Nesta said. “What would you do with me now?”

Cassian side-stepped so they were closer. “I’d ask if you were hungry, Nesta.”

“And if I said yes?”

“I’d feed you. Are you hungry, Nesta?”

She hugged the blade closer and nodded. 

“Good,” Cassian said. “Follow me.”

Then he swung his arm around her shoulders, yanking Nesta close and muttering, “Precautions.” 

She couldn’t contain the smile that tugged at her lips. “Where are we going?” she asked. 

“My second favorite place in Velaris,” Cassian said.


	5. Summer Storms & Ugly Wallpaper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SMUT!!!! And by smut I mean the sexual expression of twue mate wuv. Sorry I'm a pervert but I have been waiting for these two to get physical for a while and they finally dipped their toes in said waters! ~*~OTPPPPPPPPP~*~
> 
> Summary: Nessian's impromptu first date continues; Nesta finally gets it (it being her main issue); Cassian understands consent and is amazing at touching bodies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sorry for typos and delays hereafter! Two weeks until my exam so I'm not at my most diligent**

In the time it took for Cassian to lead Nesta to the harbor, night had fallen and a dense cloud cover had rolled in. Cassian loved a summer storm—he, Az and Rhys used to fly through the lightening when they were younger and more stupid. But tonight he didn’t want it to rain. He didn’t want anything to ruin this meal. He and Nesta sat on the back patio—which was really more of a walkway to the laundry—behind Luli’s, the tiny dockside restaurant that Cassian loved best. It was too small to seat the whole Inner Circle but Cassian had been coming here alone for decades. It was one of the few places in Velaris he considered his and his alone. Luli had even made a special chair for his wings.

Nesta sipped the spicy broth from her spoon. Her back was straight and she held the utensil like a well-born woman. He watched her swallow, watched her close her eyes and hum at the taste. Luli’s had the best seafood stew in all of Prythian no matter what the Summer Court might like to think. But a part of Cassian hadn’t wanted to bring her here. Luli’s wasn’t refined. A part of Cassian had wanted to lie, take Nesta somewhere slick and pretend it was his favorite. But the bigger part of him had wanted to show her the place he loved and to eat there together. 

He’d made the right choice. When they’d walked back to their table, Nesta had beamed. She liked her privacy—he already knew that so he shouldn’t have been so surprised. She’d run a hand over the cloud of papery, magenta blossoms erupting from a vine along the fence before sitting down. Cassian watched her now, face soft in pleasure. He let his eyes wander over the crescent moons of her eyelashes, the straight line of her nose. The humid breeze made the cluster of candle flames dance, throwing light and shadow all over her. 

Cassian thought about her jealousy on the bridge and swallowed the urge to smile. She’d come to trust him enough in time, he hoped. He didn’t want Nesta to be burdened by that. But in the meantime, jealous Nesta was amusing as hell. She’d gone all I-steal-from-the-Cauldron lethal. The image of her with children, protecting them with that same vicious will, surfaced in his mind and he quickly pushed it away. 

And then it occurred to him that he still did not know what Nesta had faced. What he had failed to protect her from.

“What was it like?” Cassian asked her. “In the Cauldron?”

Nesta blinked. He watched her delicately set down her spoon—so well mannered. He wondered if he could ruffle her enough to peel back that layer of civility. She licked her lips. 

“It was a fight from the start,” she murmured. “Unpleasant. Not exactly dinner conversation.” 

He’d made her uncomfortable. What was he thinking asking that out of nowhere? “You don’t have to tell me,” he said. 

Nesta looked at him and frowned. “I know I don’t have to tell you.”

Even though it would piss her off—hell, because he knew it would piss her off—Cass grinned. “Well? Are you going to?”

Nesta sighed and looked at her bowl of stew. “Fine,” she said. “If you really want to know. When I went in, I was angry. Because of what had been done to Elain.” There was a quiver in her voice and Cassian fought to keep his shoulders straight under the weight of the shame. He knew he’d failed her and he would never forgive himself for it. But he pushed against the heavy feeling. Because if he hadn’t failed, she wouldn’t be sitting here at Luli’s eating seafood stew under a stormy sky. Everything needed to happen just as it did. 

“When I went under,” Nesta went on. “It was like the Cauldron knew. It knew I was angry. It knew I would fight. It was completely…disorienting at first. I was just sort of falling with this power moving around me. It was dizzying. But I could tell it was…stalking me, assessing me. So I reached out and…and I grabbed it. I yanked it down.”

Cassian smiled. “You told it to heel.”

Nesta glanced up at him and blinked again. “I do have a way with dogs,” she said after a moment. 

The laughter bubbled up in him and Cassian released it even though it was too loud for the small space. But Nesta was smiling too, almost shyly. He liked this. He liked that they could poke and prod each other without wounding. 

“Well, then it caught on, I guess,” Nesta said, brow a little pinched. “It’s hard to describe, but something changed. I felt it shift. And then it was horrifying.” She swallowed audibly. His laughter died, replaced by a burning need to know. What had happened in there? What had happened to her while he was helpless on his knees? 

“You don’t have to tell me,” Cassian reminded her. 

Nesta shook her head. “I was outside the little cottage where my sisters, my father and I used to live. It was winter and I was standing outside but I wasn’t really there. I…I couldn’t open the door. So I just stood there in the cold I couldn't feel. And then I saw Feyre. She was coming in from the woods. Her hands were empty. She wasn’t crying but…but she had on the face she wears when she’s trying not to cry. She couldn't see me. When she opened the door, I slipped inside behind her. And then….” Her cheek pinched in a little and Cassian realized she was biting herself. He took her hand. “And then I saw myself. I was huddled by the hearth with Elain, braiding her hair. I saw the hatred on my face when Feyre walked in. I saw the…the disappointment that she had come home with no food. But I also saw the secret triumph at her failure. I wasn’t just lazy and selfish and cruel. I was…destructive. I wanted her to fail because I wanted my father to suffer. And I wanted to suffer. I wanted all three of us to suffer because it would hurt him.” 

Cassian took the hand he held and sandwiched it between both of his. “The Cauldron showed you your darkest time.”

Nesta laughed. “It showed me my worst fear.” 

He gripped her hands. She looked into her stew like it was a scrying glass. Cass squeezed her again but she wouldn’t look up. “We’re all a little afraid of ourselves at some point, Nesta,” he told her. “You’re not alone in that.” 

Finally she looked up at him. “When have you been afraid of yourself?” Nesta asked.

Cassian had never scared himself more than in the war against Hybern. When he’d abandoned rank and flew straight to Nesta after she had screamed his name. When he’d known, then and there, that his men were on their own, because she needed him. That terrified him to his core. Almost as much as the idea of losing her. 

Cassian shrugged. “There was a male in the camp I grew up in. He liked to test me. He’d sneak up on me after training from behind—things like that. He confronted me on our rite of passage. When the young males go out into the wilds of the Illyrian Steppes and the survivors come back warriors. I knew he would find me so I waited for him and then I beat him. To a pulp. I was afraid of myself then. Afraid I wouldn’t stop.” 

Nesta was quiet for a moment and then she laughed—a lady’s laugh like a descending chime of bells. “You’d never do that,” Nesta said with such conviction Cassian smiled. 

“You sound sure. Stick around so you can remind me.” 

There was something incredibly erotic about Nesta blushing. One minute she was uncompromising steel and the next she was tentative, shy. The contradiction was heady. So was the shameless idea that no one else saw her vulnerability. Only him. Like she trusted him above others.

“You’re blushing again,” he told her. 

Her face flared redder and her forehead wrinkled. “What’s the point in telling me that?”

“To watch it get worse.” 

Her eyebrows rose into arched peaks. 

***

Cassian took a large piece from the cut of meat he’d already half-devoured and put it into his mouth. He ate with such…gusto. Filling his big hands with bread, sopping up sauce and taking great swallows of wine. He laughed around his food and sighed his satisfaction. Nesta had never enjoyed something like that. She’d never devoured anything. When she watched him eat, she felt the images register in the apex of nerves between her legs. Which made her blush all the more. She could feel the color in her face burning.

Cassian just grinned at her and gestured toward her cheeks with a torn piece of bread. “Then it just builds on itself,” he said. 

“What makes you blush, Cassian?” Nesta snapped. 

He chuckled a self-indulgent little chuckle. “Not much, Nesta.” 

Cocky bastard. “No?”

“I’ve been alive a long time.” Nesta rolled her eyes. He said it with the superiority of the ancient.

Nesta took a dainty sip of stew. “Seen it all have you, general?”

He rocked back on two legs of his chair, bouncing a little. “Just about.” 

“Hmm,” she said. “I bet I could make you blush.”

She was playing with fire. But how could she help it? He was a smug bastard and he needed to be put in his place.

“Try me,” Cassian said, eager. 

Nesta applied herself efficiently to her soup. “You think I smell too clean,” she said after a pause, repeating, more or less, the glimpse she’d received from his mind. “Or rather, you’d prefer I washed less so you could know my smell.” 

Cassian choked on his wine and the sight of his handsome face flushing a violent red was more satisfying than any meal. Nesta set down her spoon. This she could devour. 

He recovered with a big gulp of water and a sigh that transformed into a chuckle. A dangerous chuckle. 

“You asked for it.”

“What?”

“You stare at my hands,” Cassian said. “You think about me touching you with them. Looking at them makes you want to cry.” 

She inhaled a sharp breath. She hadn’t thought this through. “You wait to take your shirt off until I’m looking.”

“You want to lick the sweat off my chest.” Nesta gasped and then cringed at how ridiculous it was to gasp. The chest he spoke of shook with laughter. 

“You’re obsessed with my neck!” She sounded a little shrill. She was in too deep. 

“Mm,” Cassian said, eyes dropping to run the length of her throat. “You have me there.” 

Nesta stared at him, catching his dancing eyes, looking away, catching them again. How was he so calm? Nesta was...she was full of something. Where did they go now? What was she supposed to do with this energy? The need for answers made her incredibly uncomfortable. Jittery. 

Cassian took his napkin and wiped his lips. Watching the cloth move over his mouth allowed her to relax enough to draw a deep breath. He rose and offered her his hand. 

“Come,” Cassian said gently. “We’ll walk along the river if you’d like.”

***

Cassian led Nesta along a dockside little street and then up the mouth of the Sidra back into the heart of Velaris. He still had her new sword tucked under his arm. They sat at the edge of the river not far from the bridge and Nesta put her feet in the water. The air was pregnant with the electric energy of the impending storm and the night above was dense with cloud. But the lights and lanterns of the city scattered across the glassy river like a clear, starry sky. 

Nesta shifted her skirts away from the edge of the water and felt the orange she’d put in her pocket. She began to peel it. She slipped a piece into her mouth and then offered Cassian some. They’d left Luli’s before dessert.

Cassian reached for the orange and then stopped. She raised an eyebrow at him. He started to speak and then stopped. Sighing, he dropped his feet in the water beside her and looked out at the city. 

“Have you ever seen Rhysand look at a bowl of soup?” he asked. 

Both her eyebrows rose this time. “No,” Nesta said. “I can’t say that I have.”

“He gets misty eyed.” 

Nesta swallowed the fruit in her mouth. “Does my sister have something to worry about?”

Cassian laughed in his chest. “No. Do you know why Rhys gets misty eyed when he looks at a bowl of soup?”

“Because he’s a little touched?”

“Well, yes. And because he’s a sap. But he gets misty eyed, because Feyre offered him a bowl of soup when she accepted the mate bond between them. That’s the traditional way a female shows she accepts it. Giving food.”

The orange suddenly felt damp and heavy in her hand. Nesta thought of the cookies at the theater. No longer hungry, she set the orange down by her hip.

“And what if two males are bonded? Or two females?”

Cassian shrugged. “It’s an old tradition. Some people honor it, some people don’t. Some change it to better fit their lives.” 

Some people honor it, some people don’t. She thought of his face when he refused the cookies. Thought of the way he’d caught himself before he took the orange slice. You honor it, she thought. You want to honor it. 

But with her? Why? 

Nesta had the answer. She had in fact asked him why so why wasn’t she satisfied? I like you vicious, he’d said. He’d said her heat burned hotter and her softness felt softer. She contemplated probing that invisible link between them. To hear it again, to feel it through him. But would that be enough to quiet the doubt within her? Nesta didn’t think so—it would only burden her with a habit. Checking over and over to see if it was really true. And yet Nesta didn’t suspect him of lying. She believed Cassian felt the things he said he felt. She just didn’t believe she was actually…a proper foundation for those feelings. 

Cassian hadn’t seen her in that cottage with Feyre, hoping for death out of spite and punishing everyone around her. He hadn’t seen her be so small. And yet…something began to dawn—a realization just on the edge of her consciousness, looming over the back of her head. Because that wasn’t quite true—Cassian had seen Nesta be small. She had sliced and cut at him from the moment she met him. Ridiculed him for being a bastard. She’d told him she’d rather have her own hand than his touch. She had kneed him in the balls the first time they were alone, for Cauldron’s sake. Only today she’d swiped at him about visiting whorehouses. 

No, the problem, Nesta realized with growing horror, wasn’t that Cassian didn’t have enough information. The problem was that Nesta didn’t believe she could form the basis for the feelings he’d shown her even if he did. And that was terrible news, because it meant that what stood in her way was…herself. That undaunted creature by the fire in the cottage who knew no blow too low. Who smiled viciously and withheld all warmth and basked in coldness. Who punished herself to punish everyone else. That steel-enforced will that had no match. The only foe who truly scared Nesta. Herself.

She laughed. It was bitter at first and then she was doubled over her legs, cackling in earnest. The face that looked back at her from the water looked a little mad. But it was funny. Because they weren’t different after all—she and Cassian. Not at their core. Neither of them believed they deserved the other. 

“Oh, no,” Cassian said. “I broke her.”

And that was funny too, because she was already broken and Cassian might be the only person who could help fix her. Thunder cracked like a whip and suddenly the sky opened and sheets of water came down. 

Cassian was on his feet. “Come on,” he said, lifting her by the armpits. She left the half-eaten orange by the river.

They half-ran down an alley. Nesta tried to huddle against him as much as she could while moving. For some reason, knowing that she was the one in her way and not Cassian made her feel like being close to him. Lightening flashed and for a split second it was day. Cassian’s cheek covered in stubble, his face serious as he looked around for cover. She panted a little and with the sound of her breath in her ears, Nesta said farewell to that crippling fear she had of her own hope. Because it was that hope that separated her from the girl by the hearth wishing destruction on everyone around her.

“Here,” Cassian said, swinging open a door that jingled. He held it for her as Nesta climbed up the entry stairs and into the most hideous room she had ever seen. It was very dim, with only a few flickering gas lamps. The walls were papered in forest green with a dizzying pattern of pink roses. A mahogany stairwell let to the upper floors of the townhouse. 

“What is this?” Nesta asked. Cassian was looking around in horror. 

“An inn. A haunted inn.” 

“Hello!” A plump woman dressed head to toe in the same terrible pink as the flowers on the walls emerged from around a corner. “Caught in the rain, were we?”

“Yes,” Cassian said, effortlessly reverting to his smiling self. Nesta stared her. Did she have no idea how hideous this place was?

“Came on quite quick,” the woman said, looking at Cassian with warmth that shifted to uncertainty when she glanced at Nesta. “Can I get you two a room?” 

It was so deftly done, Nesta realized the woman must have had many couples come in at odd hours. 

“No, no,” Cassian said, smiling still. “We’ll just sit…in this lovely room and wait out the storm if you don’t mind. Do you have hot tea?” 

While they discussed tea, Nesta thought of going back to the townhouse or the House of Wind. She thought about the little bubble around her and Cassian when they were alone together. She thought of how it would burst when they returned to the places they shared with everyone else. 

“We’ll take the room,” Nesta heard herself say. 

Cassian’s head whipped around, his wet hair sticking to his cheeks. Nesta didn’t look at him. 

“Lovely,” said the woman smoothly and dispensed with the key and directions. Then Nesta was climbing the creaky stair with Cassian, tense and somehow radiating heat, behind her. 

***

They stood on either end of the hearth, empty and unlit, like they had stood not long ago at Nesta’s father’s house when she was mortal. She gripped the mantel in one hand and stared at her knuckles. Cassian rested his elbow on the little shelf, leaning in a way that belied the tension in his body. The sound of thunder came down the chimney.

“Do you know the last time I broke Rhysand’s nose?”

Nesta blinked up at him. “No?” she said. 

Cassian cleared his throat. “After the mating bond between him and Feyre was…solidified, Rhysand, like most males during that time, was an irrational prick who fought anything and everything that looked twice at her. I provoked him so he’d blow off some of that steam.”

Nesta digested what he was trying to tell her. “He wasn’t able to control himself?”

“No. He wasn’t.” 

“How did they, did it…solidify?”

“I don’t know exactly. I just know that she accepted the bond and they were together physically.” Cassian’s eyes held hers and told her what he wasn’t saying outright. Their delicate balance of unspoken things was at risk. She needed to know that before they went further.

“I see.” Nesta nodded. She looked at him. “I don’t care.” 

“Good,” Cassian said, moving toward her. “I don’t either.” 

Then he wrapped her in his warmth and put his mouth on hers. Nesta raised her chin, eager for the furnace she had missed so much. He was soft with her but deep. Taking care but not going easy. Nesta gripped his arms, his wonderful arms, then ran her palms over his shoulders, his lovely, noble shoulders. Then back down his biceps over his forearms to the hands that cradled her skull. His hands. He broke away, moving his mouth toward her neck. 

“No,” she said, tilting her head to put their lips back together. She wasn’t ready for them to not be kissing. 

Cassian made a sound in his throat like he was suffering. Then Nesta was in the air. He hefted her by the waist then caught her around the backs of her thighs. She snuggled against his front shamelessly. It felt right in her body to wrap herself around him. He ducked his chin and captured her mouth again. Nesta’s back met the hideously papered wall at the bedside. Something clattered—a lampshade, a nightstand drawer—but she barely heard it over their breathing. Cassian’s breath was coming in and out of his nose in quick pulls. His hair was wet from the summer rain. The back of his neck too. 

Nesta yanked at his shirt, prying it free. Cassian walked backward a step or two, letting her pull it up. He lowered them until he sat on the edge of bed with the ugly quilt and she straddled his lap. Then the shirt was over his head and there was a teeming whorl of black ink. It cloaked his shoulder in swirls that weren’t wings but seemed to fly. It dove toward the middle of his upper body where it swam beneath dark hair. Nesta put her nose and mouth against one of his shoulders then pressed her face into the center of his chest. She breathed deeply. 

She felt rather than heard his laughter and smiled against him. Cassian could laugh all he wanted. She would smell him as much as she pleased. He tugged gently on her hair, which had come loose in their dash through the storm, and she raised her head. He smoothed one hand, then the other over her forehead and down the back of her skull. She made a little sound—mmph—an impatient half-whimper. He pressed her jaw opened and went deep once more. Nesta’s brows drew together. 

Cassian put his fingers under her sleeves at her shoulders and the small touch felt like lightening. Slowly he eased the fabric down until her upper arms were bare and only her breasts held her dress up. Suddenly nervous, Nesta broke the lock of their lips to breathe and swallow. Cassian leaned forward and pressed his open mouth just above the rise of her breasts then up to her collarbone and along it. Over her shoulders and finally up the column of her neck. His eyes were scrunched shut. 

He kissed the very top of her throat under her chin and then looked at her. Gently, Cassian pulled her dress at her waist and the cloth slid down, exposing her. His eyes glazed over and Nesta might have laughed only she was blushing so furiously. She didn’t want to be the kind of woman who blushed. She wasn’t that woman—meek and coy. But Nesta had never been close to another person like this. Had never let herself be vulnerable and while it excited her, it also humbled and overwhelmed her. She found him watching her face though his eyes kept darting to her chest. 

“Can I touch you?” he asked. He sounded choked. 

“Yes, Cassian,” she said softly. “Touch me.”

He dipped his head and took as much of her left breast into his burning mouth as he could. The air whooshed out of Nesta in shock and then all thought fell silent at the warm scrape of his tongue over her nipple. She arched her back. His hand covered her other breast, fingers playing and the two points of sensation were so overcoming Nesta realized how much power he had over in this moment. She’d do anything to keep him touching her like this. She had to even the scales. She reached down and gripped the length of him through his clothes. 

Cassian did choke then. He pulled away and took her wrist, removing her hand. Something flared in her chest. Had she done it wrong? Nesta frowned. Well, that was his fault. How was she supposed to know how to do it? 

“Nesta.” She met his eyes. “Can we be slow with this?”

She frowned more darkly. “What does that mean?”

He struggled for words. “I want to touch you tonight. That’s all.”

“Why?” she snapped. “So you can lord it over me later?”

He looked so disappointed. Nesta swallowed and covered her breasts with her forearms. “Why?” she repeated more quietly.

Cassian released a long breath. “I would rather wait, Nesta,” he said. “Until—no, if things between us become…more solidified.” 

Oh. With all the half-talk about matehood and the nakedness, Nesta had almost forgotten they were still dancing around it. 

“You want to wait until—if I accept the bond?” she asked. 

Cassian’s entire body jolted beneath her. She put her hands on either side of his neck to settle him. There was so much vulnerability in his eyes Nesta regretted being so blunt. 

“Sorry,” she said. “I just think that maybe…maybe if my breasts are going to be in your mouth then we ought to be honest about what we both feel?”

Cassian looked up at her instantly, something raw and burning swimming around in his eyes with that vulnerability. “You—you feel it?”

“Yes,” Nesta said. “I feel it. You know I do.”

He swallowed and looked away. “I just think if we wait—”

“Yes,” Nesta said. “Let’s wait.” 

It made perfect sense. Why get closer before they knew if this worked? It would only make it that much worse if it didn’t. 

Cassian stared at her. Then finally an insufferably victorious grin spread over his lips. “You feel it,” he said, flipping her onto her back. Nesta started to reply but he put his hand under her skirts on the inside of her knee. He stroked it higher, the texture of his palm rough with callouses. 

“Cassian.” Now she sounded choked. 

“It’s okay, Nesta,” he said, serious suddenly and gentle. 

She nodded but he removed his hand. He pulled her dress down over her hips and then her underthings until she was naked before him. The ugly quilt scratched her backside. Nesta resisted the urge to cover herself. To grip him so she could have him in her power as much as she was in his. She breathed deep and found his eyes. She didn’t need to do that. She could trust Cassian. Thunder rumbled outside.

He stretched out on his side next to her, head propped in one large hand. He found her thigh again and smiled down at her when she jumped a little. 

“It’s okay,” he said again. 

“No one’s—,” she stopped and cleared her throat. “No one’s touched me like this before.” She thought of Tomas groping at her through her skirts. “Not—not bare.”

Cassian watched her eyes and nodded. A shadow flicked over his face like he knew what she was remembering. “I’ll be careful with you, Nesta. I promise it.” 

She swallowed the lump in her throat and smiled. “What if I don’t want you to be careful?” she whispered. 

He nipped her earlobe and then said quietly right into her ear, “Careful isn’t the same thing as gentle. I’ll always be careful.” 

He brushed his fingers over the most sensitive part of her, not opening, just feeling. Her eyelids drooped a little even though her whole body throbbed with her quickened pulse. When he touched her more closely, Cassian closed his eyes and his jaw tightened. His fingers slid easily through her arousal. For a moment he looked like he was in pain then his face smoothed into focus as he watched her and pressed her where she wanted him to.   
Nesta drew a harsh breath and with her exhale went all shyness about Cassian seeing her stripped down. It felt too good to care about that. All her focus centered on that sharp, high-pitched need.

“That’s it, Nesta.” His voice sounded like the voice in her dream. So low and so serious. It made her rock her hips for him. She gasped when the movement pushed her firmly against his hand. Cassian covered her open mouth with his. He lay his head down and Nesta turned hers to keep the kiss. But then he scooted the arm that wasn’t already occupied around her shoulders and lifted her. He lifted her until they were both sitting, her between his open legs, back to chest. His touch never ceased, their kiss never broke. 

Cassian trailed his free hand over her throat, stroking it, then over her breasts and then down to meet the other. Nesta felt pressure at the opening to her body and stiffened. He stopped. 

“Can I touch you deeper?” he asked. 

Nesta swallowed and nodded. Her head was damp with sweat now. Him touching inside her made Nesta nervous. Not in the blushing virgin way. Nesta had just never gotten much pleasure out of it when she tried it herself and she didn’t want anything to ruin this night. 

While his other hand continued to stroke and circle, Cassian filled her with his middle finger. It felt rather nice. She relaxed back against him. He placed an open-mouthed kiss on her neck. And then he curled the finger inside her and a strange sound escaped her—involuntary and guttural—as the sharpness of her need changed into something else entirely. No longer high-pitched but something low and big. Something that made the promise of satisfaction mean something much, much more. 

“That’s it, love.” His lips were against her throat.

Cassian moved his fingers, stroking deftly, and that’s when Nesta lost all of herself. The sounds she made she’d never heard before. The movements of her body she did not recognize—the beckoning jolts of her hips, the twitching of her legs, the acute arch of her neck. They came from some ancient instinct that had nothing to do with her will. She could smell her own sweat and arousal. All of it came from her. But none of it was at the mercy of that fearful part of herself that loved control. A tear of relief slipped over her cheek. Cassian caught it with his lips and, all the while, murmured words of praise. 

Across the room the window flashed with lightening and for a moment Nesta could see herself and Cassian in the vanity mirror against the far wall. Her pale, slick body enveloped by his dark, tan one. His two arms a V down the length of her torso. Her expression was intoxicated. And yet Cassian looked just as lost as she. He was resting his forehead against her temple. His eyebrows were drawn, his eyes scrunched shut as he whispered in her ear how much he wanted her to come.

Then it was dark once more and Nesta’s eyes rolled back as her body shook and curled in on itself. She was saying “please” over and over, first with desperation and then with a smile in her voice and Cassian was groaning like a dying man and she felt it through his chest. 

Only when she pushed feebly at his wrists did Cassian stop touching her. His fingers came away slick, glimmering in the dark. Over her ragged breath, she heard him put them in his mouth. Her eyelids drooped. For a moment she thought she was falling. And then she found herself lying on her side in Cassian’s arms, his body pressed against hers. 

She was floating and Nesta realized that she was still free. Still released from that part of herself that sought control. She smiled and found his hands.

“Thank you.” She sounded drunk or asleep.

He kissed the upper length of her spine and then the back of her neck. “That’s not something you need to thank me for.”

But it felt like a gift. “Yes, it is,” she mumbled. 

She felt him smile. “Then you’re welcome, Nesta.” 

***

The next day Cassian found Rhys and Az on the roof of the townhouse. Rhys was seated, nursing a drink and Az was staring out at Velaris, standing straight-backed. 

Rhysand cut him a glance over the rim of his glass. “Ah, my rogue general. Where’ve you been?”

“Here,” Cassian said, gesturing toward the city with a hand. 

“We have an invitation to the Spring Court,” Rhys said sourly. “To meet the other High Lords and the mortal delegates and figure out what having no Wall means.” 

“Looking forward to it?”

“Immensely.”

Azriel turned to them. “Tamlin didn’t invite Feyre. Against the advice of his entire Court.” Cass glanced at Az and wondered what sources he had in a Court as small and fractured as Spring. 

But Cassian wasn’t here for an update. Not yet. 

“I’m moving out of the House of Wind,” he said. 

Rhysand coughed on his drink. Azriel hid a smile and put his palm out in front of Rhys. The High Lord looked both impressed and wary as he handed over a few coins. 

Cassian crossed his arms. “You bet on me?”

“When you started training her, Az said you’d be out in two weeks. I thought it was too good a stake to refuse. Clearly I was wrong.”

Cassian watched Rhys. The High Lord was amused but he was also worried. Cassian would have to deal with that at some point. 

He turned to Az. “Pleased with yourself?”

“Yes,” Azriel said. “I am.”

“You’ll miss me,” Cass told him. Then he pulled out a chair, flipped it around and sat with the back against his chest. “Now tell me everything that prick said.” With his fingers he made little horns to indicate Tamlin. 

***

Below Nesta drifted into the garden where Elain was working. She heard the sound of males laughing—Cassian’s the loudest among them—and glanced up. 

“What are you planting?” Nesta asked. 

Elain beamed up at her from where she knelt, hands in the soil. “Poppies. They might bloom before the summer’s out.” 

Nesta looked at the sweet face she had always loved so much. Did Elain know how much freedom she had? How liberating it must be to be kind and gentle by default. Elain had no side of herself to fear. 

“I was wondering,” Nesta said, tucking her skirts as she sat down on the outdoor bench. “If you wouldn’t mind teaching me how to bake bread.”

Elain’s dirty hands stilled and she blinked up at Nesta in obvious surprise. “Bread?” she said. 

“Yes. The bread you make for toast.”

“The one Cassian likes? Of course.” Elain beamed. “I’d love to teach you.” 

Nesta smiled and stroked a hand over her sister’s soft hair. She settled back against the bench and felt the sun on her skin. The laughter above started again and drifted down over her on the warm breeze.


	6. Spring Strolls & Rebel Reels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nessian's growing bond is tested in enemy territory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay (and for being a little loopy while writing this)! Had to take a big, scary exam that determines whether I can do my job or not and then moved. Boring! Unlike what lies herein, which is not boring. Nessian hits a lil bump and some truthies are shaken loose and are dealt with...sorta.
> 
> Huge, tremendous thank you to goaggies for beta-ing this chapter!!!!! It is thanks to them that you don't have to suffer through an unintelligible mixed metaphor (now, just an intelligible one!) and it is thanks to them that I have so much to think about as I move forward with this pair!

Hope, Nesta thought, was a very fickle thing when you decided you wanted it. Like a wild-born bitch that refused to heel or come when called. One moment, it was her fondest companion, trailing her every step. The next, it utterly deserted her. When the unreliable thing decided to show, Nesta had a mirror to her better self and there was…warmth within her. When it didn’t, there was no access to the place Nesta was just learning to recognize. 

Nesta noticed patterns. Hope, Nesta found, liked to hang around when she was with Cassian. Especially when she was alone with him. When it was just Cassian and herself, it was always there and Nesta blazed. Her heart was on fire—as if Cassian’s flames somehow slipped between them and became hers. When they were with the others in the townhouse, hope, though it didn’t stay quite as close, remained. 

The memory of Cassian pulling her behind the staircase made her blind to her surroundings. She didn’t see the blue afternoon sky or the roses or the pale petals pulled off the willow by a mild breeze. Nesta saw only the memory. The others had been eating noisily, a quick dinner in the kitchen as they prepared to leave for the congregation at the Spring Court. When Nesta had come down from her room, Cassian’s arms had wrapped around her from behind and held her back where they couldn’t be seen. It was only a few moments but a whole world seemed to exist within them. There, at the foot of the stair, each inhale and exhale was an eternity. Here, among the crowds of Fae and human representatives at Tamlin’s Court, that world was gone. Hope had slunk away and nothing was warm. 

The Spring Court was a strange place. It was so beautiful—and its beauty was so pure—that Nesta thought it must be utterly intoxicating when you were cheerful. For her, though, the Spring Court was so dissonant to how she felt that it honed the dread inside her into a lethal edge. So Nesta walked and let the memories blind her to the season’s mocking cheer.

She thought of how Cassian’s body had vibrated with rage. Like a cello string, plucked. How his ciphers had flared their livid red. His posture had both straightened and curved downward at the same time. Like a predator readying to swallow his prey. His focus had been one of Autumn’s sons, and Cassian’s fury had been on Morrigan’s behalf. They had only been in Tamlin’s reception hall for half an hour before the undercurrents of tension had cracked open into violence. Nesta trailed her fingertips over a yellow rose that blushed like sunset. 

“The Morrigan does not deign to speak with me?” the son of Autumn had asked. He had shining red hair like Lucien but his features were sharper and colder. 

Mor’s brown eyes had slid over him scornfully. “Only when strictly necessary. Which, thankfully, isn’t often given your father still has all the power in your Court.”

The fire-haired man had chuckled. “Did I really make you hate me so much?” 

Cassian, who had been standing close to Morrigan with his back to their conversation, turned around. His great hands condensed into fists.

“Ah, yes,” the High Fae male had continued. “I drove you to that.” He jerked his chin at Cassian. “How could I ever expect you to forgive me?” 

And just like that, the hands Nesta loved so much were wrapped around the Fae princeling’s pale throat. The mouth she dreamt of was a slash of white, threatening teeth. Cassian had walked the son of Autumn backward until his shoulders thudded against the wall, making a gaudy decorative table rattle. The air around Cassian wobbled like heat made visible. Nesta had slipped through an open door into the courtyard before she could see more.

And now, here she walked through the gardens of Spring abandoned by her hope. Nesta knew something of what had happened to Mor. She knew enough to understand that if Cassian didn’t stand up for her, even if he wasn’t her friend, he would not be a male worth loving. But there were centuries of history there. History longer than multiples of Nesta’s lifespan. And Cassian had taken the blonde to bed. The idea made Nesta squint against a sudden lightheadedness. Part of Cassian’s heart belonged to Morrigan. And Nesta shouldn’t mind. She should understand. But it made her sick. Because there was no doubt for Nesta that Mor was a worthy foundation on which to build such feelings. Mor was valiant and giving, kind and graceful. She was beautiful and fun. Nesta hated her, and Cassian would always fight for her. 

Nesta wasn’t really cut out for this mate business—that’s what it kept coming back to time and again. She even resented Azriel for what part of Cassian’s heart he held. But Azriel wasn’t a beautiful blonde. Too small—she was much too small for this. The idea of going back to a life without Cassian was achingly sad. But there was a tantalizing relief beside the sadness. Even though there would be no more warmth, there would be quiet in her again—a chapter closed, finalized. She’d know who she was and where she stood. And even if who she was remained flawed and where she stood was riskless, at least she wouldn’t be mired in jealousy. At least there would be no one to see how shamefully small she was.

“Nesta!”

Nesta turned to find Elain and Feyre coming down the path between the rose bushes. Feyre kept glancing at the plants like they might reach out and grab her. Nesta mustered the effort to give them a smile. 

Elain linked her arm in Nesta’s and Feyre came up beside her a little more carefully. Elain, who seemed to thrive in Spring, plucked one of the flowers and pressed it against her nose and mouth. 

“Lovely time for a walk,” Elain said. She supposed it was, but Nesta suspected that her sisters hadn’t abandoned the diplomats in the reception hall to enjoy the weather. A part of her was annoyed at having been followed. Another part, grateful.

“Have Rhysand and Tamlin come to blows yet?” Nesta asked. When Feyre had shown up uninvited on Rhysand’s arm, every inch the High Lady, their host had grown claws. 

Feyre frowned and looked to the ground. “Not yet,” she muttered. She glanced at her sister. On second thought, perhaps Feyre had her own reasons for being out here.

“Productive start to a peace visit.”

“Predictable,” Feyre muttered. “If not productive.”

“Does Cassian often get into fights?” Elain asked gently.

“At least as often as Morrigan is maligned in public, I’m sure,” Nesta murmured.

Feyre looked at her with such concern, Nesta bared her teeth in a silent snarl that was only half jest. Feyre rolled her eyes. 

“Cassian hates Eris,” Feyre said. “I’m not surprised it came to blows. Although thirty minutes is a record even for Cassian.”

Nesta stayed silent and probed the place where her hope would be.

“He’s seemed so much happier lately,” Feyre added. “Do you know why that could be?”

Nesta lifted one eyebrow. “As High Lady of the most powerful Court in Prythian, I would hope you’d be able to muster more subtlety than that.” 

Feyre grumbled. “I don’t want to have to be subtle. Not with my sisters.”

“Nor should you be,” Elain chirped, reaching around Nesta to pat Feyre’s hand. 

“I can’t believe you used to live here,” Nesta said. 

Elain looked around like she didn’t mind the idea. Feyre moved an inch closer to Nesta as if she were now quite sure the rose bushes would reach out and snatch her. 

“I can’t either,” her sister said. “It seems like another life.” 

The rose path ended and just beyond was a meadow of gold stalks, swaying in the dying daylight. Nesta stepped through the plants, thorns catching at her dress, and her sisters followed. They walked in silence for a few moments. Elain laughed when she found a group of butterflies and plopped down to watch them. Nesta found herself sitting down in the meadow too and then she and Feyre were stretched out on the ground, looking up at the sky together. 

Nesta puffed out a pent up breath. “How do you deal with it?” she asked. 

“Deal with…?”

Nesta already hated herself for thinking the words. Would saying them aloud make it worse? “Rhysand loving other people.” 

Feyre reached over and held her hand in a light grip. “I trust him. And I want him to be happy. I want him to have people to love besides me.”

Nesta’s throat felt heavy. She knew she should feel that way. But a part of her…didn’t. Not when the person who had his love was a female like Mor. A female who was so clearly worthy. A female that any male would fall in love with. She laughed a gurgled laugh. “Why do people who aren’t able to be mates have mates?”

Feyre’s quick inhale of breath was quiet but Nesta heard it. She supposed she’d never acknowledged the bond she felt with Cassian to Feyre by its name. Her sister’s hand tightened around hers. “There’s no right way to be a mate. And I think you’re able to do whatever you set your will to, Nesta,” Feyre said. “I think that’s true of you more than it is of anyone else.” 

Nesta squeezed Feyre’s hand. At least if she lost Cassian, she had Feyre. At least there was more than one person in the world who had faith in her. 

They lay there a while, watching the sky turn periwinkle. Elain joined them and they talked about memories. Memories from yet another life—before Feyre came to Spring, before Prythian and before the cottage. A few tears leaked from Nesta’s eyes as she laughed and it felt good. It felt good to release what little she could. 

She reached her hand up to pet the stalks of gold that surrounded her and her sisters. Then she was looking into a pair of amused, violet eyes. She heard Feyre groan.

“Here I am brokering peace and my High Lady is rolling around in the barley with her sisters.” 

A pair of hazel eyes appeared next and Nesta sat up too quickly. The contents of her ehad swam dizzying. She looked anywhere but at him, brushing her hand over the back of her head and shoulders. 

“Hello, Nesta.” His voice. Why did it make tears rise in her chest? She looked up slowly and saw the corner of his upper lip was split. His eyes were not amused. He looked solemn and bewildered. She smiled faintly and nodded a silent greeting. Cassian frowned. 

“Dinner is served,” Rhysand said. “But by all means, let’s keep Tamlin waiting.” 

Elain seemed to sense Nesta’s discomfort. She leapt up and smiled at Cassian. “Shall we go in?” she asked him brightly. Bless Elain, Nesta thought. She’d always been her favorite sister for a reason.

Cassian blinked down at her. “Rhysand will take you. I need to speak with Nesta.” 

“Speak with me?” Nesta said, standing now and shaking out her skirts. “Surely it can wait.” 

“It can’t.” 

Stubborn ass. Nesta narrowed her eyes. Rhysand led Feyre and Elain toward the house. Cassian and Nesta walked more slowly, a few paces behind. 

“Where did you go?” he asked. 

Nesta wiped her face blank and stared ahead. It was easier not to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“In the reception hall. You were there one moment and then gone the next.”

“Oh,” she said. She shrugged a little. “I needed some fresh air.”

He nodded like he was solving a puzzle. “Did I upset you?”

That aching lump was lodged in her throat again. “No—,” she started. But that was a lie. She wouldn’t lie. “I wasn’t interested in watching you brawl,” she said. It came out clipped. 

Cassian ran one of his hands over the back of his neck and sighed. “Beron’s sons get the better of me,” he explained sheepishly. “But if you knew what they’d done—” 

Nesta had to get away. She already knew how justified he was. Even if Mor hadn’t suffered, Mor would be worthy. Nesta had to leave before she either burst into tears at her own shame or she said something to hurt him. She grabbed his arm. “I know, Cassian,” she said. “I don’t blame you. I would fight him if I were you.” 

His brows furrowed. “Then why—”

Nesta shook her head. They were at the door. She slipped into the room full of light without a backward glance. As she darted around the massive table, she heard Cassian’s voice behind her. 

“Do you think I don’t know when you’re trying to hide from me?”

***

Cassian watched as Nesta wove through the High Fae drifting around the long table. She was like a dark arrow moving through golden mist. And she was trying to find a seat away from him. He kept pace with her on the other side of the table by elongating his stride. His stomach felt hollow—not hungry but very empty. He’d felt her leave before. Like realizing the weight of something he always kept in his pocket was suddenly gone. 

Ever since Cassian had begun training Nesta, Mor had been watching him whenever Mor was around. Which was much less than usual. Which affected Azriel. The three of them had been dancing their dance for centuries and now it was disrupted. He knew Mor watched for the same reasons Rhysand looked worried—they weren’t sure what kind of mate Nesta would be, which put Cass’ back up even if their intentions were well-meaning. But Cassian knew Mor also watched, because she had something to lose. The buffer between her and Azriel. He’d lost his shit on Eris not just because the prick almost always deserved it but also because Cassian needed to show them—Mor and Az—to show himself, that nothing had changed. That he was still a part of whatever Azriel and Mor needed him to be a part of. He wasn’t going to let them down even if he wasn’t sure why, exactly, they both needed him between them still. 

Only things had changed. Now Nesta’s absence was palpable. Now he felt…guilty. Why did he feel guilty? Cassian knew that she was a viciously prideful creature. Had she left because of that? Was she ashamed to be a Night Court delegate when the general of their army brawled in public? Why would she want to associate herself with the hotheaded Illyrian? He couldn’t blame her. 

Nesta finally took a seat and Cassian smoothly lowered himself into the place across from her. The muscles around her mouth tightened but she didn’t look at him. He thought of how Nesta had looked after he’d kissed her on the stairwell at the townhouse. She’d been surprised when he’d reached for her. After he’d kissed her—not to his fill but enough to dull the aching need—her mouth had been soft, her expression somehow sleepy and awake at the same time. Like after he’d touched her at the inn. Sated Nesta, stripped free of her armor, was somehow greater, more whole for it. Like a missing piece of herself clicked into a place and she settled. 

Some minor delegate of the Winter Court occupied the place beside Nesta, and she seemed to find him utterly engrossing. Cassian watched her. He was going to find out what was wrong and given that his battlefield was the Spring Court dinner table—after he’d beaten Eris’ face over hors d’oeuvres—his best strategy was to wait and observe. Occasionally her eyes flitted to him, guarded. When Tamlin rose to give his poor excuse for a welcome toast, she looked at her lap. Bowls and platters of food arrived and Cassian took the liberty of serving her just to watch her color rise. She scowled at him. The man next to her looked between them in interest. 

Cassian leaned back in his chair and probed the link between them. The drawbridge was up but he pressed against it gently. While Nesta was murmuring to her dinner partner, a few images slipped through the hold she kept on her thoughts. There were some of him—red-faced and snarling at Eris. But there were others. Mor. Mor’s big eyes widening when Cassian intervened—the combination of dread and relief that always seemed to pour out of her whenever either he or Az took her part. Cassian shifted in his chair, reaching more deeply into Nesta’s mind. Mor’s golden hair catching the light of Tamlin’s crystal chandeliers. Mor laughing at her seat at the table only a few feet away. Nesta was obsessing about Mor. Why?

Nerves rode him. The idea that fighting for Mor upset Nesta made Cassian feel like the room was closing in around them. He wanted to fly out into the open night and feel the air up high where it was cool even in Spring. Cassian waited for the emotions that accompanied the images in Nesta’s mind so he could understand. But there was nothing. It was locked away—she had locked them away. And that pissed him off. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be stuck in the Spring Court, surrounded by their enemies and High Fae pricks who were too insignificant to be their enemies but were still pricks. He didn’t want to feel like he had to choose between being there for Mor and Az and Nesta. And he sure as fuck did not appreciate Nesta hiding why she’d left the room when he fought Eris.

When low fae servants brought out dessert, Cassian stood. Their entire half of the long banquet table fell silent. Like maybe he was about to start another fight. He gritted his teeth. He didn’t know if it would work. It probably wouldn’t. But there was no way Cassian was going to sit a second longer at Tamlin’s table with Nesta a locked box across from him. 

He’d never tried communicating down the bond between them. But he had a feeling the message would get through. He put every ounce of his frustration and panic behind the message. 

“Follow me.” 

He walked out, the sound of his boots echoing on the faultless marble floor. 

***

“Follow me.” 

The words reverberated in her skull so violently, Nesta jumped in her seat. They echoed like the aftershocks of an earthquake. She felt a headache take root. It took only ten seconds for her to reject the idea of not following him. She wasn’t one to take orders—especially not from him—but he’d never resulted to bellowing in her mind before. This must be important. And she had no interest in discussing the logistics of a Fae-human fur trade with the Winter delegate. 

Discreetly, Nesta rose under the pretense of finding fresh air. She didn’t know where Cassian had gone but somehow her feet did, taking her down a hall of black-and-white marble tiles until she reached a pair of double doors, one ajar. She slipped inside.

It was a library. An enormous collection, better suited to public consumption than a private home even one this majestic. They were always meeting in libraries—the one in Velaris where he’s opened his arms for her, the one at the House of Wind where he’d told her she wasn’t a coward. It was fitting, she supposed. Libraries kept secrets. Cassian stood, a large silhouette of shadow flanked by legions of honey-colored wood and leather-backed tomes. 

Nesta folded her arms and waited. He didn’t speak but his breath was so heavy she could hear it.

“You gave me a headache,” Nesta told him. 

“My apologies.” He sounded…angry.

“Why am I here?”

“Tell me why you left,” he demanded.

Nesta raised her eyebrows. “If I wanted to tell you, I would have told you in the field.”

“Well, you’re going to tell me now. You’re not going to sit across from me at dinner—even a dinner like this—and hide from me.” 

“I’ll do whatever I want, Cassian. You’re not my master and you never will be.”

He laughed harshly. “Does sharing what’s bothering you subjugate you, Nesta? Does it bind you to my will? Why is every single piece that you give a concession to someone else’s power? Why can’t it be freely given and freely received?”

He couldn’t be serious. Nesta strode forward until he was less a shadow. “It can’t be freely given when you order me around. What’s the matter with you?”

He didn’t speak for a long moment. “You first,” he finally said. There was something about his voice. A thread of desperation in it that made Nesta fidget. 

“No,” she said. 

Cassian took a large step until they were toe-to-toe. He glared into her face and Nesta had no problem glaring back. He broke away to pace. 

“I’ve been the buffer between Azriel and Mor for centuries.” The words rushed out of him like blood from a flesh wound. Nesta’s surprise was a stab but she recovered swiftly. 

“Didn’t you bed her?” she asked. “A very dedicated buffer.”

He glared at her again. “I barely took her virginity. I was attracted to her. I always have been.” Nesta’s stomach dropped in a sickening way even though she already knew this. 

“So better her buffer than her nothing,” Nesta supplied. 

Cassian whipped his head to her. “No,” he said, firmly. “I came to terms with the fact she doesn’t want me a long time ago. I admit I was pissed at first, but I figured out hundreds of years ago, Nesta, that she and I don’t work. Not like that. And then you….” He turned his eyes on her but Nesta was not in the mood to help him. 

Cassian looked to his feet. “Mor is not my mate. And I’m grateful she’s not, because we wouldn’t fit. Not like—” His choked off the words. “But Az,” he continued. “Az has never gotten over her. There’s something between them and they need me between them or else….”

“Or else?”

Cassian tugged on his long hair. She’d never seen him so agitated. “I don’t know. Or else they’ll break.” 

“Logical.”

“I can’t explain it,” he snarled. “But I can’t let them down.”

Nesta nodded slowly. He was making no sense, but a dawning relief had her sagging. Like she’d been climbing a mountain and finally reached the top. He wasn’t in love with Mor. He loved her but he wasn’t in love with her. 

But Mor was using him. Her and Azriel, both. The whole Inner Circle was relying on Cassian to create an environment in which they could hide from themselves.

Cassian stopped pacing. “I can’t let them down,” he repeated, his voice strained and wiry. “So why do I feel like you want me to?”

Nesta froze. How presumptuous. She might want to set the world on fire if Cassian was in love with Morrigan. But that didn’t mean she gave a fig about the dramatics of his friendships. She tilted her head. “Perhaps because you’re a paranoid people pleaser?”

“You left.”

“Yes, I left. I left because I was jealous. I was jealous that you were fighting for her. I knew you had slept with her and that she…has a place in your heart.”

“Jealous?”

Why did he sound so relieved? And why hadn’t he guessed? Hadn’t he seen her on the bridge? She was a tight-fisted lover. Too in love with control to be good at love. 

“Yes, jealous,” she hissed. “Don’t you get it? I don’t know how to do this. I’m possessive and cruel and I will hate every female who has any part of you.”

Cassian dismissed this with a flick of his hand. “I can handle your jealousy.”

“How in the name of the Cauldron can you be sure of that?”

“You’ll get over it.”

Wrong thing to say. Nesta wasn’t proud of the miserly part of her heart that wanted to hoard Cassian’s regard like a firedrake with its cache of jewels. But no one, least of all Cassian, was going to tell her how she felt—in the past, present or future. 

“Excuse me?” she asked with lethal quiet. 

Cassian seemed to be in the process of relaxing an inch at a time. The tension in his shoulders dissipated first and then it rippled free through the rest of his body as he stood straighter. 

“You’re young,” he said. “Time will teach you your own value. And it will make you secure in trusting me.”

It was a tug-of-war between wanting to slap him for being so patronizing and wanting to sit down as hope that what he said was true rocked through her. Hope. Fickle indeed. But underneath the battle of her own emotions, Nesta felt him. The current of his residual anxiety. He was that worried about letting down Azriel and Morrigan. He was still…afraid, she realized, that Nesta would ask him to abdicate what he felt was his responsibility. Even though their dynamic was so clearly unkind to Cassian. That boy—the mud-covered one with hazel eyes and a mop of dark hair—was there. He was afraid of letting down the first people who had accepted him as family. 

“I don’t care if you’re their buffer, Cassian,” she said, not gently but clearly. She didn’t care—not enough to walk out of a room. But she didn’t think it was fair or…healthy for him. But even Nesta knew that Tamlin’s library was not the place to initiate that conversation. Nor was it the time, she thought, as she watched…as she felt the final eddies of tension ease away from him. She hadn’t realized his wings were unfurled a few inches until they collapsed against his back. 

How ingrained a pattern this must be, she thought. How dedicated a habit. She peered at him. Was matehood always the dissolution of one problem replaced by the next? She wanted to feel grateful. Grateful that Cassian could accept the jealousy that made Nesta so ashamed and grateful that she could accept the responsibility he felt he owed to his beloved companions even though it was…misplaced. She supposed she was grateful. But she barely noticed as her mind whirred. Wasn’t it her job as Cassian’s…whatever she was to make sure he wasn’t being used? How could Nesta possibly hope to accomplish that without coming in between him, Mor and Azriel? She was defeated already. 

Nesta forced herself to push that puzzle aside. Why should she care? So what if there was a bond between them? His happiness was his responsibility and if being the middleman between his friends made him happy…. Only it clearly didn’t. Tamlin’s library was not the place. She’d think about this later.

“Shall we go back to the party?” she asked. 

“Eager to get back to the delegate from Winter, are you?” Cassian replied without missing a beat. 

Nesta felt her lips quirk. “He’s not stupid enough to think he can order me around. But he talks incessantly about animal pelts.”

Cassian smiled. It wasn’t his usual grin—it was more muted than that. No, Nesta thought, being the buffer between his friends did not make Cassian happy. 

“We’d better not keep him waiting.”

***

When Nesta took the arm he offered, Cassian bit back a sigh of relief. But he felt drained and unsettled. Like something still wasn’t right though he didn’t know what. When Nesta had asked him what would happen if he didn’t stand between Az and Mor…he didn’t want to think about what he’d almost answered. They wouldn’t need him anymore. He pulled in Nesta’s cool scent and let it clear his head. Now wasn’t the time for this. They were still on the battlefield. 

A merry sound filled the hallway as they made their way back to the dining room. Lilting notes jumped and danced in echoes across the marble. A fiddle. Nesta and Cassian found that the dinner table had been cleared. Tamlin’s guests were milling and spilling out into the courtyard. There, the High Lord of Spring played his instrument as not a few High Fae tittered in delight. 

Cassian felt Nesta go rigid. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

Nesta frowned at Tamlin. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.” She said it mostly to herself. Then she lifted her eyes to him. “He played for Feyre too. He knows…he knows just how he looks.” 

Cassian glanced at the prick. The great lug sawed deftly over the strings, golden hair glinting in the candlelight. The sound was infectious. Like liquid joy. A cluster of females from the Day Court were watching him and giggling. Nesta was right. Tamlin was the High Fae ideal in bloom. Beautiful, cultured, talented, powerful. Nothing of the raging beast beneath. Nothing of the possessive, self-indulgent child. He was playing them all. 

Rhysand, Feyre, Mor and Azriel appeared. The Inner Circle closing ranks at the sound of Tamlin’s music. Rhysand was expressionless. Feyre looked haunted, Mor angry on her behalf. Azriel was listening to his shadows and watching the crowds, cataloguing their reaction. 

“Quite the performance,” Rhysand drawled.

Feyre inched closer to her mate and he encircled her in his arms, watching Tamlin over her shoulder. That was it—no one upset Cassian’s High Lady like that.

“Come on,” he said to Nesta.

“Where?”

“To dance.”

“To what?” she hissed. 

Cassian folded his arms over his chest and looked down his nose at her. “Are you going to let that prick seduce everyone here? Are you going to let him traumatize your sister?”

“How will dancing help?” she spat.

Cassian looked at her indulgently. “No better way to ruin Tamlin’s party than for the Night Court to start dancing. Come on.” He pulled her hand.

Nesta dug her heels into the ground. “Wait, wait, wait.” She was nervous. Had he ever heard her so blatantly nervous before? Cassian stopped to watch. “I can’t dance,” she said. “Waltzes, yes. Not to music like this.”

Cassian grinned. “That’s okay. I’ll dance for you.”

Nesta’s brow pinched. “Dance with someone else. Dance with Mor.”

Cassian shook his head and grabbed her hand, towing her through the crowd of High Fae. 

“Has to be you,” he called over his shoulder. 

“Why?” she ground out. 

Cassian gave a little yank on her arm and Nesta teetered until her front was plastered against his. He took her hand and lifted her a few inches off the ground with an arm around her waist.

“Because,” he told her. “This will only work if we’re really having fun. And I’ll have more fun dancing with you.”

He liked having Nesta’s face almost eye level. Her glower was a little less daunting up close where he could see the freckle by her nose. “You’ll have more fun forcing me to dance, you mean,” she groused. 

He grinned and pulled her into a twirling arc that swept the edges of the crowd. Even though it was Tamlin playing, this was the music that Cassian could move to. A lively, unrestrained reel. No learned steps, just a feeling that translated into movement. Like fighting. Nesta’s face turned atrociously red and Cassian threw back his head and laughed. The music faltered by a quarter beat but resumed. Some Fae began to clap and then the crowd was counting time with their hands. 

Cassian twirled her and Nesta quickly put her arms around his neck. He kept moving her round and round until a little, astonished laugh—so quiet compared to his—bubbled out of her. She relaxed her head back into the momentum of their movement and all Cassian saw was the pale column of her throat stretched out into the air. He brushed his lips along it. Her eyes darted to him and smiled. Then rolled upward to take in the crowd at the edge of her vision. 

“It’s working,” she said, voice lit with wonder.

“My plans usually do.”

Nesta began to roll her eyes when she saw Rhysand and Feyre whirl past. Then Mor and Az. She curved her lips in a merciless smile. 

“Now it’s really working.”

He grinned back at her. “Don’t fuck with the Night Court.” 

Her eyes gleamed. “Don’t hurt the people Cassian loves,” she retorted.


	7. Dancing & Kneeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays! My sincere, heartfelt gratitude to those who continue to read and to wait for more and to tell me so.
> 
> Thank you to goaggies for beta reading and suggesting I not use the word "armpit" so much.
> 
> Herein Nessian continues to deal with truths unearthed while away from home at the Spring Court. And to fall into their places beside one another :)
> 
> ****************************************

Tamlin quit the fiddle as soon as the song ended. The High Lord of Spring played the last stanzas in a frenzied race to the final note. Cassian had Nesta bent backward over his thigh when the music abruptly died and the instrument clattered to the floor. 

Tension fell over the suddenly still High Fae—the kind of pause where everyone waits to see what the pause will mean. Was this the moment before all-out violence between the Spring and Night Courts? Nesta felt Cassian tighten the fingers that held her waist. A ready kind of energy rolled off him in waves. His other hand was splayed across her upper back, holding her in the silly dip she had demanded he not do again. Cassian did not seem to notice—his eyes roamed the crowd watchfully. 

Then the sound of footsteps echoed sharply. Nesta released the breath she had not realized she held. Tamlin was walking away; punishing the crowd with the sound of his boots after giving them the sound of his song. Cassian straightened but did not release her. A low, cautiously relieved murmur rippled through the nighttime courtyard. 

Then came a note. A high, sad note. A tuning note. Someone had taken up the fiddle abandoned by Tamlin—Nesta could not see whom. But the song that came was slower and eerie, a lilting braid of deception and remorse. One moment it made drawing breath hurt. The next it mocked her for her pain. 

Slowly, the frozen couples began to move again—a different dance. Slower, closer, and less sure. Cassian held Nesta still longer than the rest. 

Nesta was too stiff for this kind of dance where bodies pressed front to front. During the reel, it was easy for Cassian to toss her this way and that. To spin her out into the empty space between their embrace and the onlookers. Now Nesta felt like a wooden board Cassian was forced to hold and work around. 

Cassian’s eyes tracked up—to the higher levels of the Spring Court manor. Something he saw there satisfied him, and Nesta was suddenly being moved again with the same fluid ease as before. Though the steps were slower—and covered much less distance—he put enough power behind each one that Nesta began to feel boneless again. 

The strange song took on a lulling quality. Nesta watched Cassian watch the other Fae around them. Eventually, he lowered his eyes to watch her in return. Sometimes their eyes met. Often her eyes went wandering. Skimming along the frame of his jaw. Tracing the sarcastic curve of dark hair above his eye. She leaned in a little to look at the very faint lines sketched across his brow. Cassian must have had cares before he settled into his immortality. A lovely brow, she thought. 

There was an odd feeling to being held by Cassian here in this place. The hand that swallowed hers and the forearm along her back burned against her skin. But Nesta felt as if she were drifting up out of her body. She could almost see herself from above. Her gold-brown head tilted up, his darker one tilted down. 

“What is the point of it, do you think?” Nesta asked. She sounded slurred though she had taken nothing since the wine at dinner. “Mates.”

Cassian was suddenly entirely present before her. Only then did Nesta realize he had still been half-watching the crowd. Now he ducked his chin a little to see her face more carefully, his lovely brow furrowed.

“What is the point of mates?” Cassian repeated back to her calmly in the way he did when waiting for her to make herself clear.

Nesta had not quite intended to ask the question aloud. It was a question she meant only to ask herself, but, halfway through thinking it, she knew she did not have the answer so it fell from her lips and into the world. And, like everything Nesta said before she was sure what she really meant, it was bald and harsh. Like the threshold between her mind and her mouth was trained to frame words in the least sensitive manner possible. 

But, really, she wanted to know. So she nodded. Cassian ducked his head closer and raised his eyebrows at her in a way that said—try again. She pressed her lips to keep from smiling. 

“What do you think the purpose of matehood is?” Nesta amended quietly.

The forearm along her middle back tightened until she was squashed against him almost lewdly. Nesta could tell by the mischief in his hazel eyes that he was about to say something irritating. So she lowered her hand from his left shoulder and pinched his bicep a little. Cassian looked down in amusement.

“The purpose,” Cassian began in a tone that told her he had decided to answer seriously. “Is to protect. And to provide. It is the…arena in which to express that instinct and desire.” 

Nesta pondered this. And some of it rang true for her. She certainly wanted to protect. Sometimes the need was so severe it overwhelmed everything else—even fear. But the way Cassian spoke of it—of the instinct and the need—was as though it had been living inside of him, contained and waiting, forever. Nesta had always felt the need to protect the ones she loved...even when she failed in doing so. But she could not say that the need to protect a mate had always been waiting within her. 

“But that’s just you,” she said. “It’s not me.” That wasn’t what she meant exactly—but how could she explain that she needed a bigger answer?

Cassian burst into laughter so loud it hurt her ears. She smacked the flat of her palm against his shoulder. He was still moving them round so Nesta could not see how many people turned to stare.

Cassian dipped his head again until his lips almost touched hers. “Do you not feel the need to protect me?” he asked. His eyes glittered a little and in them Nesta could almost see the memory of laying her body over his to shield him from Hybern. “You’re in fine form tonight, Nesta.” 

“I need to know the purpose,” she said. It was almost a whine. Nesta heard it like it was someone else’s voice. 

Cassian cocked his head at her tone and his eyes grew serious. “Why?” he asked gently. “Why do you need to know?”

He turned them until Nesta’s face was in the lantern light, his in shadow. 

“I drift sometimes,” she said without knowing where the words came from, without realizing this was why she needed to know until she said the words. “Into my mind. When you hold me.” 

Like when he’d flown her above the lemon grove. Like when he held her for this slower kind of dancing. In the sweet, throwaway moments. In the moments that were unprompted—that should go almost unnoticed. Nesta noticed these moments with a sharp, exacting clarity. And she drifted off during them until the experience was like a dream. As if she were not really there. As if they were not really for her.

At the back of her mind was the puzzle of the triangle between Cassian, Mor and Azriel. The sure sense of her own inevitable failure to solve it. The mean jealously imbedded in her heart like a thorn. The doubt that what Cassian said was true—doubt that she would ever grow into so large a person for that jealousy to no longer have a home inside her. Failure, envy, doubt—like winds, Nesta drifted away on them in the moments where Cassian held her as if he had always been holding her.

“I do not want to drift.” She was not sure she was making sense to him. How could she explain that perhaps if she, if Cassian—if they—answered the questions in her mind, she could stand firmly and truly in her body where she wanted to be? She could pin herself down and not drift away.

The memory of his loud laughter was in the curve of his lips, but Cassian’s eyes were soft. 

“You are not a Fae or an Illyrian male,” he said. “So the instinct is not the same for you. But before you toss away my answer, have you really thought about what it means? The instinct I describe is a calling. To be able to step into it is not just about the chance to do something you have a need to do. It’s the chance to be someone—to be a part of yourself—you never got to be before.”

Nesta swallowed at the emotion conjured by his words. “So you get to become yourself while I watch?” she asked snidely. 

Nesta got cut by her own sharpness sometimes. And by the pity in Cassian’s gentle eyes, he knew this. Her lips turned down uncontrollably and painfully. Her face grew hot. 

Cassian leaned closer still, until his kind face was an inch from her twisted one. “Did you ever think,” he whispered. “That it is your birth right to have someone become himself for you?”

Nesta shook her head quickly. “I want to go back.” The words were almost soundless. “I didn’t…I didn’t say what I meant before.” 

Cassian stopped moving. There was something like shock on his face, and Nesta wondered…she wondered if she’d ever admitted as much before. Then he was grinning at her with so much pride, she pinched his arm again. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” she pleaded. I feel like a child, she did not say. 

Cassian schooled his features into bemused neutrality. “Sorry,” he said. “Go back.” He pulled her into the gentle, swaying dance again. 

Nesta drew a deep breath. “You have this instinct,” she began. “And it’s like a glimmer of who you could become. I don’t have that instinct. And I don’t need you to protect me, to provide for me—” Nesta stopped and thought. She felt his eyes on her. “Let me think,” she said. “How to say what I mean.”

Cassian was visibly controlling the urge to grin at her again. “By all means, take your time.” 

Nesta thought about what it meant for Cassian to protect her. She thought about what he provided her. She thought about the fiery cloak of his arms around her. She thought the feeling of being seen. She thought about his hands and his laughter and the way he teased her. There was a difference between having certain needs met—needs for closeness and warmth and connection—and needing something to survive. For even if the longing sometimes felt like starvation, Nesta knew in her bones that she could survive. And it did not seem fair—fair to her—that just because Cassian had his instinct that matehood meant he came into himself and she passively reaped the benefits that ran off his transformation.

“I do not need a mate to survive,” she started again. “Nor, I think, do you. So…do I also get to become someone? Even if I don’t have your instinct? Even if I don’t have any idea of who she is?” 

Cassian smiled at her, and it wasn’t full of pride or amusement—it was simple and open and happy. His teeth were bright in the dark. He put his mouth by her ear. 

“Don’t you think,” he murmured. “That you are already becoming her?”

Nesta pulled back so she could watch his face. “Who is she?” she whispered. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I want to.” 

Nesta felt herself drifting back into the question. How could she be sure? How could she be sure she would—she could—grow? 

The song stopped. Cassian released her but kept hold of her hand. He walked to the end of the courtyard, leading her. Nesta walked behind him with sure steps, but her mind still gripped and fiddled with the question. Cassian scooped her up, and they were in the sky. 

Nesta watched Cassian’s powerful wings beat the balmy air. As he held her and flew, Cassian put his lips against her hair and explained, “I said the instinct was a calling. A calling to become someone, a part of yourself. I think being a mate is the calling. And the instinct—by whatever magic is in my blood—paves the way. It prepares us. But it’s being a mate that calls you to a new part of yourself, to a bigger self. So if you want to become…her—to become that part of you, Nesta, I think all you have to do is listen to the call.”

Nesta put her chin in the space between Cassian’s neck and shoulder and watched the lights of the Spring Court get smaller. 

“A mate is like a mirror,” Cassian said in a thick voice. “You’ve shown me parts of myself that my instinct only hinted at.” 

Nesta closed her arms around his neck and rested her cheek against him. He was carrying her like a child, and Nesta wondered if it was so shameful to feel like one. To feel young and malleable. To feel new and small and ready to be bigger.

Then the weight of something sad had her pressing her mouth against his skin so it would not wobble. Cassian held her more tightly, and the air cracked as his wings worked more quickly. 

“You show me the worst, the sharpest parts of myself,” Nesta admitted. 

There was something so disgusting, so humiliating and selfish about needing to be held, because of her own unkindness. It made her shake with rage at herself. It made her tremble to be dropped for being so low.

She felt Cassian’s warm hand splay across her back. He bent his head to kiss the small part of her neck that was not covered by her blowing hair. 

“It’s alright,” he said. “That’s alright.”

There was a sighing sound, and Nesta blinked open her eyes. Cassian had flown them back to the barley field where she had hid from him with her sisters. The golden stalks looked silver in the starlight, swaying as a mild breeze sifted through their ranks. 

Cassian dropped her legs so she could stand but kept his arms around her. He shifted his forearms so his big palms rested on her forehead. He ran them over her head, smoothing back her wind-ruffled hair.

“Hello, Nesta,” he murmured. 

She reached up and held his arm. “Hello, Cassian.” She peered at him like she might see her reflection there. 

“Is it only the sharp parts I mirror for you?” he asked, watching her. He ran his hands over her head again, hooking his thumbs into the tangled strands of her hair and easing it down her back, out of his way. The spring air touched her neck. 

He bent his head. “What about at the inn?” His breath dusted her skin and just that small sensation made Nesta roll her eyes back in her head. She gripped both his arms now like he was an anchor, and she a little boat tossed at sea. “What about the woman on the bed in that room?”

Memories, like aftershocks, of the way she felt that night came in waves over her—remnants of a relief so pure it had made her cry. She was shaking again. Shaking with the desperate want to be her again. To step into that part of herself. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps she could not survive without certain needs met. Her mouth ached for him to kiss it.

Cassian only dragged his chin over her throat. “She was so free,” he said. “And you were her. You are her.”

Nesta wanted to be set free again. She curled her fingers in his shirt. “Please,” she said. 

Cassian did not lift his head or show any sign he had heard her. He reached around her back and smoothed the hair away from her other shoulder. Nesta arched her neck. 

He lifted his head and looked at her with eyes lit from the inside with a knowing and infinitely kind light. 

“You are thoughtful,” he said with a smile, sifting one hand into her hair so it cradled her skull. “Full of thought. Share as many of them with me as you can. But if you want not to drift.” He scratch her scalp a little so she knew he meant to her head. “Asking questions about what cannot be put into words is not the way.” 

She knew that now for she was no longer drifting. Her mind was silent but for the beat of her pulse in her ears. The places on her body where she wanted to be touched throbbed precisely. From the way Cassian’s chest rose and fell, from the way he drank in her face, Nesta knew she must already look ravished—with tangled hair and half-lidded eyes and lips swollen in unmet anticipation. 

“Next time,” she said in a voice that sounded like smoke. “I’ll ask you to kiss me.”

“And what about now, Nesta? What would you ask for now?” he said.

She looked at him in silence for a moment. Then she tore through the barrier she kept at her end of their bond. She let free the flood of images refined by her mind but born from some place deeper. Cassian on his knees in the field, lifting her skirts. Nesta on her knees. Nesta eating at his mouth, sighing in the satisfaction of it, while she placed the large hands she loved so much where she wanted them. A tangle of gold and pale white skin moving in the barley. 

The rush of images abruptly stopped when Cassian’s body slammed into hers. His hands branded the sides of her face as he tilted back her head and parted her lips with his own. Nesta moved her mouth to feel more of his. She sighed gratefully at the warmth, the slide, the firmness of his kiss.

When Nesta was a girl, most of her dolls had been painted porcelain. But a few were cloth. Sewn by her nursemaids. The neat stitching on one had eventually become loose enough to release a tendril of thread. Not knowing what would happen, Nesta had pulled the string and the doll’s seams had come open around her edges. 

Nesta felt like that doll now. Like the string had been pulled and the seams that held her in were being torn free one swift inch at a time. At the topmost edge of her excitement was a kind of terror about this. It made the air of the breaths she managed to pull in jagged at the back of her throat. But it was not enough to stop her. To stop the pulling of that thread. 

Nesta was making sounds like Cassian was already touching her. Her arms wove under his shoulders to clasp them from behind. She felt it then, a very light tremor—Cassian was shaking too. He pulled back and sucked air in through his teeth like he’d been burned. 

Nesta pressed herself closer. “Show me again,” she demanded. “Show me myself.” 

Cassian had closed his eyes, and his nostrils were flared. When he opened his eyes, they were shiny and intoxicated. He pushed into her so she lost her balance, but one of his arms went around and caught her as he lowered them both to their knees, hers in between his. 

Nesta clawed blindly at the buttons down the front of her gown. Cassian put his open mouth on her neck and bit her. He bit up and down her neck while he shook. Not hard enough to hurt her or draw blood—just a firm sinking of his teeth into her skin. Her fingers fumbled on the buttons. With her flesh in his mouth, Cassian rose up and slid both his hands into the front of her dress. She felt the lines of his palms scrape along her skin. The cloth strained and buttons popped free, a few scattering across the fallen barley stalks they had crushed on their way down. 

When his fingertips found the tender points of her breasts, he pinched them gently. Nesta made a sound like the wind had been knocked out of her. She squirmed in a helpless kind of way until Cassian, mouth still occupied, lifted one knee and kicked hers wide. He put his knee down between hers. Nesta immediately pressed herself shamelessly close. Cassian released an open-mouthed hiss against her skin. Nesta pushed her face into his chest, back arched, as her hips rocked back and forth. The relief was so overwhelming Nesta fisted her hands in his shirt and moaned against him. 

“I missed you,” she said, voice muffled, even though it made no sense. She had seen him countless times since the evening at the inn.

Cassian released her neck. The places where his teeth had been ached in a way that made Nesta whimper to be bitten again. He gripped her under the arms so that she slid up his leg and his face hovered just above hers. She wound her arms around his neck. He gripped her hips to press her down onto his leg more firmly as she rocked. 

His pupils were blown wide as Nesta stared up into them while she moved. “Did you know that I knew?” he asked hoarsely. “I knew you would be exactly like this. From the moment I first saw you, I knew you’d be greedy and free.” His voice cracked a little. 

She made a mewling sort of sound. It was a pathetic noise, but Nesta did not care. She wanted him to know the dire way she felt. So she did, though she was beyond words. She looked up at him with all the need she felt glimmering in her eyes, shuddering through her parted lips. She let down the drawbridge in her mind so he knew exactly the kind of delicious desperation she felt. That heady gratefulness to find herself able to be so uncontrolled.

Cassian dropped his head and somehow the humility of the gesture shoved her to the topmost arc of her pleasure. Cassian bunched her skirts with one hand, handing them to the other, which still gripped her hip. His eyes fixated where she rubbed herself against him. Dazedly, Nesta glanced down. The image was tame. Her underclothes were sensible and modest though her thighs were bare as they trembled and squeezed around his much larger one. Still, Cassian pulled his lips between teeth in a strained sort of way, running his free palm over his chin. He seemed to debate doing something, but stopped when she gasped his name. 

It was a plea for help. There were no words in her emptied mind except for his name so she flung the feeling at him. The feeling of falling. 

Instantly, Cassian’s arms wrapped around her, and he sent a feeling back. A feeling of catching, of the relief in holding. 

Nesta leaned her head back and watched him watch her fall. She saw herself in the way that he saw her. 

He kissed her as she slowed. She exhaled into him and went limp. His tongue licked the inside of her mouth like a flame. When he broke the kiss, she was sagging and blushing. Still drunk on her own abandon, but now a little more aware of what she’d done. Of how she’d shamelessly ridden his thigh in a barley field.

Cassian stared at her red cheeks. He panted through flared nostrils like he could not get enough of the night air. He looked wild to her. His hair was coming loose from the low bun at the base of his skull. There were flakes of barley chaff stuck to his clothing. His eyes were entirely black. He had scratch marks peeking under his shirt where she’d gripped him. It made her smile to see him look so wild. Through the bond, she showed him how he looked to her. Her smile grew under his eyes.

Cassian was coiled to take some action—to tip her onto her back, perhaps—when he whipped his head back toward the direction of the Spring Court. He seemed to be listening to a sound or a voice in his mind that she could not hear. 

“Tamlin came back,” Nesta guessed. 

Cassian scooped her up again and shot into the sky. Nesta felt a new kind of hatred for the Lord of Spring. What had Cassian been about to do?

“Where are we going?” Nesta asked as they neared the manor and Cassian arced away from the courtyard toward the side of the structure.

“I’m delivering you to your room,” he said. 

Perhaps because to Nesta’s ears it sounded like something someone might say to child, she snapped, “You don’t get to decide where I go.”

Cassian glanced down at her and lifted his eyebrows. He sent her an image of how she looked in his arms—tangled hair, shining eyes, flushed cheeks, torn dress. She looked like they had done far worse in that field. 

Nesta pursed her lips. Cassian looked back to the path of his flight and smiled smugly. 

Cassian’s massive wings tread the air by the window of her room while Nesta reached out to pull it open. When she was safely sitting on the sill, legs draped in the interior of the borrowed room, Cassian grasped the edges of the window frame. 

“You do not need me to be her,” he said. “To be you. To be free.”

Nesta reached up and held his face. “Maybe,” she said. “But you help me.”

He smiled at her, and she wondered at the difference between his smile and his grin. At the absence of the bravado. At the openness and somehow the youth of the quieter expression. 

She leaned forward and kissed him then slipped into the room her enemy had provided. 

***

Cassian wanted the High Lord of Spring and those loyal to him to know that the Night Court general was present. So he landed heavily enough to crack the courtyard flagstones beneath him. Tamlin’s golden head lifted at the sound. The High Lord of Spring had indeed returned. But the prick was not looking for a fight—not yet. He was making nice with the other Courts. And pointedly ignoring everyone else.

Several Fae stepped away from Cassian’s vicinity after he slammed to the earth.

“Good of you to join us,” Rhysand said from beside him. His eyes danced between Feyre—a few paces away with Elain—to Tamlin across the crowd.

Then Cassian’s High Lord whipped his head to look at his general. Cassian knew Nesta’s scent was all over him—he knew how obvious it would be to a male with Fae and Illyrian senses what exactly he and Nesta had been doing in the field. Rhys swore under his breath and returned his attention to the crowd of Fae. 

Cassian bristled. At the idea of Rhysand knowing Nesta’s scent. At the mild revulsion limning the High Lord’s elegant features. Cassian buffed his nails against the cloth of his barley-strewn shirt and shrugged. 

“Now you know what we’ve all had to deal with,” he said.

Rhysand turned to face his general with a dangerous slowness. He lifted one eyebrow. 

Cassian grinned. “You think we haven’t smelled Feyre on you? And at the most unlikely, inconvenient of times—”

Then Rhysand was in his space, violet eyes sparking inches from his. Cassian grinned as the pent up energy from being with Nesta fizzed in his blood. He knew he could take Rhys in a fight right now. And he liked the idea. 

“Finish that thought, Cass,” Rhysand dared. 

Small but powerful hands pushed the High Lord and general apart. Cassian glanced down to find Mor scowling up at them both. She wrinkled her nose. 

“I do not want to know what you were arguing about,” she spat. “But you both look completely ridiculous right now.”

Cassian kept grinning at Rhys who coolly returned his attention forward. “Now is not the time for in-fighting,” the High Lord quietly agreed.

Cassian chuckled as he folded his arms and took up his position at Rhys’ back. He felt Mor watching him. He knew her senses were as sharp and his and Rhys.’ He glanced warily at her again and there was a question in her eyes and a worry. For him or for herself? 

Cassian looked ahead, watching Tamlin over Rhys’ shoulder. In some ways, nothing had changed. He was at his brother’s back, Mor beside them, keeping them from acting like idiots. And there was Az, leaning against a pillar under the shadow of a balcony. He was closer to Tamlin, to Lucien who hovered not far off. They were all in their places for the same dance they’d been dancing for centuries—to protect their own.

But now Cassian had questions. He thought about what he had almost said to Nesta in the library. About how they—his Inner Circle—wouldn’t need him anymore if stepped out of place. But wasn’t he already even as he held his position? That need to establish a boundary with Rhys when it came to Nesta. That inkling that there was something selfish about Mor’s reliance on him—and that she knew it and regretted it. The painful feeling that he was doing Azriel a grave injustice to think that his friend, his brother would abandon him. That any of them would. Weren’t these the questions, the whisperings that belonged to someone already changed?

Cassian thought about how it felt to hold Nesta. To have her show him that she needed to be held and to give her what she needed. He thought about how it felt to provide her the space in which she could be abandoned and free. A person who could give that, provide that—to be such a person was the hope that his instinct had kindled in him since long before he could remember.

But Cassian had not realized that change rippled. That listening to the call would shift the dynamics of his beloved family. That growing would make him question. Would, he realized at Rhysand’s back with Mor beside him and Azriel lifting his eyes as if he already knew, make him ask more of the family that had already given him so much. Ask them to shift so he could grow. 

There was a kind of high-pitched terror ringing faintly in his ears. It rang to the sound of—what if? What if they could not meet him where he needed them to be? What if he lost them? What if they let him go? 

Cassian rolled his shoulders. He willed the terror into silence. Because it was done. Nesta was that woman in the barley field, in the ugly inn. And Cassian was the male who held her. He’d deal with the fallout. He always did. 

***

Nesta lay awake in the cool, foreign bed until the small hours of the morning. She stared up at its gaudy canopy. She’d only bathed to have something to do. Nesta thought about what it meant to need. She thought about the difference between needing someone to survive…and needing someone to live.

She was on her feet before she decided to be. She’d had enough of following her head and let her legs take her where they wanted to go. Only when she was halfway to his room, padding along the unfamiliar, darkened hallway, did the thought catch up to her feet. It was silly—the simple thought said—to be in bed alone when she wanted to be with him. 

When she was outside Cassian’s door, Nesta peered through the keyhole. She could see him on his back in his own silly canopied bed. There was a sheet draped over his legs but his chest was bare. In a shaft of moonlight, Nesta could see his eyes were open. He was thinking. 

She eased open the door a crack to find him reaching smoothly under his pillow. For a blade, she realized. When he saw her, he froze. 

Then he opened his arms. 

Nesta crawled across the bed to him, tripping a little on her knees over the fabric of her plain cotton nightgown. Cassian pulled her to him so the back of her body was pressed against the front of his and draped the sheet over them both. She thought he might be naked behind her, and the thought was a bubble of shimmering excitement that floated to the edge of her consciousness. His warmth filled the whole bed like hot bricks. Nesta’s eyelids grew heavy. 

“I’m ready to go home,” she said. 

Cassian arms tightened. He nudged his face forward so that his nose rested near her neck. “I am too,” he said.

As she drifted into sleep, Nesta wondered when her idea of home had changed. The new idea was not well rounded—the only discernable aspects were Velaris and Cassian. She wondered if home was changing for him too.


End file.
